


Folie à Deux

by theshippingprince



Category: Buzzfeed Unsolved (Web Series)
Genre: 80s, And Helen is a Flight Attendant, Crime/thriller, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, I know that TJ and Devon aren't married I know this, M/M, Mystery, Ryan is a Private Investigator, Sara is a Lawyer, Shane is a cop, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-24
Updated: 2019-06-07
Packaged: 2019-07-01 17:00:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 22,428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15778290
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theshippingprince/pseuds/theshippingprince
Summary: “You’re not Steven,” Ryan said, because there was nothing else his brain could wrap itself around to say. He was hungover, and coffee — although it woke him up — did not do anything to really combat the ache in his head.The man with windswept hair and rather small lips for his face took a long sip of his coffee — or was it tea? — and sighed loudly, before placing the mug back down on his desk. He looked up at Ryan, making rather intense eye contact. Ryan had the sudden thought that the man looked like the perfect combination for an advertisement on being tired and bitter for a living, only for the low price of nine ninety five.“Funny,” he replied, leaning his head against one of his hands in a slightly passive-aggressive manner, “because you seem to have the exact intelligence of one of Steven’s friends.”Ryan bristled. It was going to be a long day.In the cold and dreary heart of winter, the sudden dissapearance of small-town sweetheart Devon Joralmon brings two opposing men — private investigator Ryan Bergara and police officer Shane Madej — together in ways they could never imagine.





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> I've been inspired by icantwritegood's many rollercoaster-esque Buzzfeed Unsolved stories, as well as UniversalSatan's edge-of-your-seat story "Mercy", and have decided to write my own. I thank both Shane and Ryan for their dedication and entertaining episodes, and I hope I do both their voices justice in this monster of a story.
> 
> Also, special thanks to Angie -- bleuboxes -- for telling me that she wouldn't hate me (as much as I hate myself) for writing a real person story. Your approval is all that I need, pal.

_ November 19th, 1986 _

 

Devon Joralmon slammed the passenger seat door shut, taking a moment to shiver within the confines of the ‘75 Chevrolet Nova Sedan. She could see her breath in front of her, a hazy puff of white cutting through the cold air within the car. She rubbed her frozen fingers together, wishing she had packed a pair of gloves, even the thin rather unattractive ones her mother-in-law had made her for Christmas last year. Anything would have been better than the storm.

It was nearly out of control. Winds pushed pellets of white in swirls of anger from right to left, left to right. It had pushed her thin frame in one direction and then the next, drenching her in specks of snow that felt as sharp as needles against her skin. Her heels hadn’t helped in the slightest, they had forced her to stumbling blindly through the thickening snow. She had nearly tripped several times, her heels had gotten wedged in a mix of the ice and snow, but all that didn’t matter now. She was inside the ‘75 Chevrolet Nova Sedan, and although it wasn’t exactly warm right there and then, she felt marginally better at the thought that it would be soon as the engine sputtered to life.

It was like a burst of hope in the eye of the storm, as ridiculous as that sounded but, Devon was grateful for it. More grateful than she could have ever said. 

Of course, what was waiting for her at home was something to dread but, she was trying her very best not to think about it. She had to focus on one thing at a time, and right now, that thing was getting warm. The conversation she had had with TJ before she had left, their argument-that-wasn’t-an-argument, it would all have to wait at the back of her mind until she was warm and cozy and ready to take on the emotionally draining aspects of her life.

It was at that moment that Helen Pan opened the driver’s seat door, collapsing into the seat, slamming her door behind her. Her cheeks were flushed bright pink from the cold, and her dark hair, which had been pinned back to sit politely under her iconic Pan Am stewardess hat, splashed across her forehead in disarray. She pulled down the hood of her coat and grinned at Devon, before she shuffled, and handed Devon a homemade holiday themed sweater, one that she had rummaged out of her luggage.

“Thank you,” whispered Devon, carefully taking the sweater from her friend’s hands and pulling it on over her own striking Pan Am uniform.

“I knew there’d be something in my luggage,” replied Helen, rubbing her gloved hands together furiously trying to generate heat, “feeling any better?”

Devon made a polite noise of agreement, but she wasn’t sure if she was feeling any better. The memorable blue stewardess uniform that both women were currently wearing — Helen had hers tucked away under her down winter coat with the false fur hood — was fairly thin, and Devon had forgotten to bring a winter coat. When both women had left Minneapolis, Minnesota for Los Angeles, California several days prior, it had been a crisp yet warm fall day. She had no idea that she would be needing her winter coat so soon. 

However, the sweater was a start — a start in the right direction.

Helen fished her car keys out of her pocket, and stuck the keys in the ignition, turning it a couple times before the engine turned over and the car rumbled back to life. It had been a long seventeen hours since Helen had parked it in the airport parking lot, and the car coughed, rubbing its metaphorical eyes before the dashboard flickered back to life. Helen pressed the button for heated air, and turned the vent to face Devon.

“Are you happy to be home?” asked Helen.

“Something like that,” said Devon. She was focusing on being warm, but a pit in her stomach started to knot as TJ invaded her thoughts. They had to talk, they had to talk about what had happened. 

The trunk slammed shut, and Helen’s eyes shot back to look at the rearview mirror, glancing out the frosted back window.

Only a moment later, Daysha Edewi cursed her way into the car. She had specks of snow splattered over her dark hair, and a look that said she definitely just wanted to go home. Without a word to either of the women, she handed Helen an ice scraper, the item she had been looking for in the trunk of Helen’s car — something that had clearly been buried down deep in the junk Helen kept in her car. She then proceeded to hold onto one of her sleeves, followed by the other, as she pulled her arms into the body of her coat, tucking them against her torso. Her sleeves fell back to her sides, empty.

Helen sighed once, and shared a knowing smile with Devon, before pulling her fur hood back onto her head, gripping the ice scraper in one hand, and exited the car — the open door allowing a mechanical dinging to occur, signaling that the door was, in fact, open — for a moment before it vanished again with the slamming of the door.

“It’s fucking freezing out there,” said Daysha after Helen closed the door. She wasn’t usually one to curse, but it was just that cold out that it almost made her body warmer when she did.

“You can say that again,” replied Devon.

“Like, I know Minnesota was cold when I moved here but, I didn’t know it was going to be this cold,” she continued, venting out her bitter anger towards the weather conditions. Devon knew it would be over eventually. It was best just to let Daysha word-vomit, and comment after. It was impossible to get a sentence in when she was this passionate about something. “I should’ve stayed in California. Like, it’s a lot nicer there, and I wouldn’t have had a single frostbite issue. I could’ve bought that cute apartment in Culver City with those big bay windows, you know don’t you Devon? I showed you some pictures. It would’ve been close enough to LAX but far enough to get away from it all and I could’ve ridden my bike to the beach, and eaten at In-n-Out once a week. But no, of course I thought that living in the suburbs of Minnesota would be cheaper, and I’d get an experience that wasn’t based around the bustling of a city.”

Devon watched as Helen started scraping the ice off the windshield, blindingly spotlighted in the darkness by the headlights of her car, strands of her hair whipping around her face as the wind picked up. She squinted into the glass as she worked, looking bitter and determined at the same time. The car slowly started to heat, and Devon could feel her fingertips start to tingle again.

“I should’ve just gone with my gut but, no, I had to decide that living in the middle of a snow wasteland in the middle of nowhere was a better choice. I could be getting a tasteful second income by renting out my quaint little apartment in Culver City, but no, of course not. I wanted to become a human popsicle instead. Hi, I’m Daysha the human popsicle, nice to meet you. I get lots of guys just from being completely frozen solid, that’s my thing.”

Helen crossed to the other side of her car, nearing finishing scraping the ice off the windshield with the power of sheer spite. The car’s engine had been turned on long enough that the inside had started to melt the ice that had frozen on the windows just enough for her job to be slightly easier. Daysha stopped speaking abruptly, leaning forward between the front two seats to look at Devon. Both women held straight faces for a moment before bursting into laughter.

“Is that really how you’re going to introduce yourself now?” said Devon, turning in her seat to face her friend. Her body had warmed a little further, and she was feeling more and more like herself. The smile that had frozen solid in the cold, stormy night, had come back to life. Of course, that also meant that that dread she had been feeling the whole flight back to Minnesota had begun to thaw, and eat up her gut again.

It was a ridiculous feeling, one that came from nearly nowhere, and she knew she shouldn’t be worrying about it, but there was something about their last conversation that had left her with perpetual shivers down her spine. He hadn’t been any different than normal, he had been more than cordial and more than kind, especially with everything she had been asking of him but, there was just _something_. She couldn’t put her finger on it but, there was definitely something. Something that kept her up when she should’ve been sleeping, something that lurked in the darkness of her mind, something that made her feel like something bad was about to happen, but she was just moments away from finding out what.

“Absolutely,” replied Daysha, grinning from ear to ear, oblivious to Devon’s inner turmoil. 

Helen came back into the car, tossed the ice scraper into the back seat of the car, and held her frozen hands in front of the slot in her car where hot air was blasting out. After a moment she sighed in contentment, and her shoulders fell slack against her driver’s seat.

“Ready to go home?” Helen asked both women, glancing at Daysha through the rearview mirror.

“I’m so ready to see my bed again, Helen, I cannot stress that enough,” Daysha immediately responded, leaning in the space between the two front seats, her elbows playfully resting on the compartment in the center.

Devon did not say anything, she simply nodded, and looked out the window as the car pulled out of the somewhat deserted airport parking lot. She thought about how rocky the plane landing had been, and about the little girl with the blonde braided hair sitting at the isle near the back, about her sobs as she kept asking her mother if they were going to make it. She thought about seeing her own children again, and how exactly they would great her. She thought about TJ and the deep, empty look in his eyes. And she thought about nothing at all.

Helen attempted to turn on the radio but, due to the storm all the stations were reduced to static, so the three women drove along in near silence. Helen drove along through the winding roads, as the trio trekked further and further into isolation. The roadside lights slowly dwindled to nothingness, and the glow of the bustling city behind them faded to complete and total darkness. It was all consuming, seeming to be endless, yet seeming to crush against the top of the car, threatening to do something that was just barely out of earshot, barely out of reach of understanding. The snow pummeled towards the windshield like bullets, appearing shockingly out of the nothingness void of night. Helen looked over the dashboard, her keen eyes screening this way and that, trying to focus on anything in the darkness that surrounded them, on the snow that was highlighted with the headlights of her car. Daysha tapped her index finger against the back of Devon’s headrest at odd intervals, biting her lip on occasion when she stopped speaking quietly to herself long enough to get lost in her thoughts. 

“How do we live out here,” stated Helen, “we could live anywhere in the world. I could be lounging on the beach of some caribbean travel destination, and yet.”

Devon thought of her children. Their sweet, rosy cheeks, their excited, youthful eyes. “The school district was rather good, and the housing was cheap but, that doesn’t explain why the two of you are here.”

Daysha said something but alas, Devon was thinking of her children.

A warmth spread in her chest. There were three of them, two boys and a girl. Ten year old Nathan, who was near enough to adolescence that he had become klutzy and gangly and awkward, but carried enough light within him that he could have lit sun itself. Six year old Oliver, who was precise and careful in his every action, even despite his young age, an old soul through and through. And four year old Emily, a chaotic force of nature, with an imagination larger than the whole universe. Every time she thought of them, she was reminded as to why she was doing it all. Why it was worth pulling herself together and looking TJ in the eye. She was filled with a sense of confidence. Sure, her last encounter with TJ had been odd, unnerving even, but she could fight the odds if it meant keeping her children safe. She had to always put them first.

Oh, and how she would be greeted when she got home. Screams, open arms, and runny noses — Nathan had caught something at school, and he had slowly given it to the rest of the family. Nathan still with a smudge of food from dinner on his nose, Oliver holding Emily’s hand tightly to make sure she didn’t run into something that could cause her serious harm, and Emily herself with her scuffed up knees covered in brightly colored bandaids sprinting ahead of the two boys as soon as she saw Devon, demanding to be the first to be picked up, hugged, and kissed all over.

Devon’s cheeks began painting themselves a lovely shade of pink, and she smiled brightly as the life flooded back into her system. Daysha rambled on about the cold, her schedule, and her apartment — the one that she shared with Helen. Helen laughed at Daysha’s comments, and hummed along to the choruses of the songs she knew, tapping out the rhythms against the steering wheel. The radio radiated a song that all three women knew, one that radiated upbeat teenage pop. All three women chimed in, Daysha belting out the lyrics, Helen singing backup vocals in a nasally high voice, and Devon singing along to the parts that she knew, albeit completely off key. Devon was warm, she was content, she was amongst friends, and she was thinking of her three rambunctious children. 

It was all she ever needed to focus on.

Streetlights started appearing again after the ever long stretch of darkness, illuminating patches of snow and shadowy trees.They were driving back into civilization, back into their shared little town. The glowing windows of houses appeared out of the gloom; there were families sitting at wide dinner tables engaging in hilarious conversation, young children racing around in their pajamas, avoiding being captured by their parents. It was almost Christmas time; there was a sense of love in the air, and although it was accompanied by stress and exhaustion, the love overpowered it all.

Devon looked over at her friends, completely lost in the moment, filled with a sense that she could take on anything. She could take on the world. Devon smiled at both women, and they smiled back in their own time.

It was no wonder that she didn’t notice how much time had passed as the car pulled up in front of the Marchbank-Joralmon household, tires crunching in the snow. Helen turned down the radio.

“We’re here,” she said.

The Marchbank-Joralmon household was a towering one. It stood at the top of a slight hill on their property, albeit only with two floors. It was made completely of wood, and resembled much of a cabin, lost in the darkness of the woods. The fact that the whole property was slowly being covered in snow didn’t help in the slightest. It had peeling off-white paint, and a large balcony on the second floor that meandered around the whole of the house, overlooking the expanse of backyard that the property consisted of. The thick, heavyset windows glowed in the gloom, yellow and welcoming with the warmth from within. Devon looked away, back at her friends and smiled. She carefully pulled off the sweater she had borrowed, folded it, and handed it to Daysha.

“Thank you,” said Devon genuinely, “for driving me home, and the sweater, and singing off key, and everything.”

“Anytime,” smiled Helen.

“What are friends for?” asked Daysha.

Devon tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and took a deep breath, mentally preparing herself for the cold. She looked back towards the house.

In one of the upstairs windows, she could see a single head looking down, silhouetted by the yellow light, like an eyeball forever watching ominously from a godlike vantage point.

“Oh,” said Devon, stepping out of the car and into the stormy night, “TJ’s home.”

It was the last time Helen Pan and Daysha Edewi would see Devon Joralmon ever again.

 

 

 


	2. Chapter Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The story begins, or Helen Pan and the Horrible, Terrible, No-Good, Very Bad Day. (Also I have nothing but love for Sara Rubin, is that evident?)

_ December 3rd 1986 _

 

The skin directly beside Helen Pan’s nails was bitten raw. The usually fairly pale skin turned irritated, throbbing and red to the point where she couldn’t touch her fingers without a stab of pain. The already dry skin turned blotchy and pink, peeling painfully upwards. Hangnails out of control, she had called them to Daysha, who had pointed them out that morning over coffee, her head leaning tiredly in her hand. Nothing to worry about, she promised. The last thing she wanted was for Daysha to worry, the woman had enough to worry about.

Daysha also had a plane to catch, but that was besides the point.

Besides, the chances were Helen was overreacting. She was blowing something so insignificant out of proportion, brought on by late nights spent reading murder mysteries, and replaying moments in her mind, moments that seemed to hold more than they probably did. The thought almost made her get up off the green chair she had spent the past ten minutes patiently waiting at, clutch her purse, and call back in, saying that it would be a close call but she could make the flight she though she had been too quote-on-quote ‘sick’ to attend.

She could almost picture the conversation that she would have with Daysha. Oh no, it was nothing, she would say, I must have eaten something my stomach wasn’t used to, but I should be okay now. Daysha would raise her eyebrows, shrug, and eventually forget about it, and the expensive taxi bill she had to pay to get to the airport after having a conversation with a passenger with bright eyes and a charming smile. It wouldn’t haunt Helen any longer, and she wouldn’t be filled with a sense of dread whenever she thought of her friend, Devon Joralmon and the fact that the woman hadn’t been seen in three weeks.

However, Helen wasn’t one to forget. As soon as the thought had crossed her mind, she knew she wouldn’t be able get rid of it until she knew what had happened. Even if Devon had just gone on vacation to the Bahamas to escape the blood-freezing, snow-infested weather. She had dipped just a toe into the water of doubt and guilt, and there was nothing to stop her from wading further and further in to the murky waters until she drowned in it all. The dread and nervousness that had overwhelmed her slowly and steadily over the past few weeks had grown to a breaking point, her head only barely above those treacherous waters, and that’s why she found herself in the office of Sara Rubin, attorney extraordinaire.

Helen had never had the opportunity to talk with aforementioned attorney, but she had heard more than her fair share of heartfelt monologues from Devon on how lovely the woman was. In fact, there were a series of trips to Germany that Devon wouldn’t stop talking about the woman. It said a lot, in all honesty, because Devon wasn’t one for gossiping — both Helen and Devon usually left that up to Daysha, because both women believed it was best to leave it to the experts. Yet, when Devon got started on Sara Rubin, there was no stopping her. A light grew in her eyes, a light that she usually only got when she talked about something her kids had done at school.

“She’s changed my life,” Devon had said one night, as Daysha had dozed against Helen’s shoulder in one of the many lounges for pilots and flight attendants around the Frankfurt Airport. They had had a three hour delay for one of their flights back to America, so the conversation had gone to Devon’s adoration about Sara Rubin. “I never thought I’d meet someone like her. Someone who cared for me, even despite everything, who listened to me and believed in me.”

Helen smiled at her friend, who smiled happily back, but it morphed into something slightly more sheepish. Devon looked down at her hands that were clasped in her lap.

“What’s wrong?” Helen had asked.

“Oh, it’s nothing, I just don’t want to burden you with all of this. And I really don’t want you to infer that you’re not a good friend. Because you are, you’re one of my best friends. It’s just, sometimes certain people can help you with, with, specifically difficult things.”

Helen nodded, pausing for a moment in thought, knowing that she’d have to pry a little more to get the information out of the blonde. “Is Ms Rubin a therapist?”

Devon’s eyes met Helen’s, wide and surprised. Much like a bunny rabbit caught doing something it wasn’t supposed to be doing, if Helen was going to be completely honest. “Oh, no, she’s not. Although, that would be a good idea. Therapist.” Devon nodded to herself, as though making a mental note of the word.

“So, she helps you, but she’s not a therapist. So, it’s more in the physical sense?”

“You’re not going to let this go, are you?” said the blonde, sighing and placing her head in her hands.

“You should know that I won’t by now,” grinned Helen.

Devon paused, looking around the lounge carefully. It was late enough that the whole place was nearly empty. The lights had dimmed ever so slightly to give the whole space a relaxed feeling. However, the look on Devon’s face portrayed the exact opposite. She was so incredibly desperate not to be heard. There were two pilots sitting across the room, nursing a pair of drinks, talking in mumbled conversation. One of the pilots laughed, a booming sound in the quiet of the lounge, and Devon looked back to Helen, swallowing almost audibly.

“She’s my attorney. Lawyer, whatever you want to call them.”

Helen raised her eyebrows, surprised. “Why do you need a lawyer?”

Devon looked away again, crossing her arms across her chest, almost trying to shrink the space she was taking up. She bit her lip uncertainly, before her nervous eyes met Helen’s kind, heartwarming ones.

“It might be good to get it off your chest, Devon,” Helen continued, “someone else to hold the secret, perhaps?”

The statement was convincing enough, and Devon leaned closer to Helen. “I think you might be right. But, you have to promise me something. You can’t tell Daysha, or anyone really. I don’t want everyone to know until everything’s solidified and in place. You have to promise me that.”

Helen nodded, leaning in even closer to Devon. “I won’t tell a soul.”

Devon smiled sadly at her friend, and took Helen’s hands in her own. She squeezed them once, twice, and three times, before she pulled her courage together, albeit completely nervously, and looked Helen dead in the eyes.

“Okay,” whispered Devon, “I’m getting a divorce from TJ.”

A gentle hand tapped Helen on the shoulder, and she jumped out of her reverie. She was still nervous, and her whole body seemed to be still on edge. It was Sara Rubin’s receptionist — Adam, or Anthony or something like that, Helen had been too jittery to remember — a quiet man with an incredible amount of facial hair on his face. Thick, heavy eyebrows, and a full beard and mustache. He also had a pair of gentle spectacles which Helen believed resembled that of a librarian.

“She’s almost ready for you, Miss Pan,” he said, “Sara’s office is a little chaotic the morning after a case, and she’s just clearing some things up.”

“Oh, okay. That’s fine,” she responded on auto pilot, before looking at him and remembering to add, “thank you.”

He smiled quietly, if that was even possible, and handed her a cup of some steaming dark liquid. It didn’t smell like coffee, which was odd for a lawyer’s office, as she had expected the whole suite to smell distinctly like coffee, exhaustion, and old-book paper.

“Hot chocolate,” he said without any prompting from her. “You looked like you needed some.”

With that, he turned his back and walked back to his desk, going back to whatever it was he had been doing earlier. He didn’t wait for her to respond with another polite thank you. She could only see the tufts of his hair over the top of his receptionist desk. Helen looked down at her hot chocolate and smiled. Sure, she was anxious, and she didn’t know what had happened to her friend, but it was nice. It was just nice to be calmed down, and thought of, even if it was just for a moment. She took a sip, burned her tongue slightly, but it was worth it.

Half way into the hot chocolate, Sara Rubin’s door opened, and the woman herself clicked out, her heels echoing on the linoleum flooring. Helen could tell why Devon liked her almost immediately. There was something about Sara’s face that radiated kindness, the genuine kind. Perhaps it was her minuscule height, or her blinding smile, or the halo of frizz that surrounded her head despite all her curls being pulled back into a bun. It was hard for Helen to tell.

“You must be Miss Pan,” said Sara, extending a hand for Helen to shake, “can I call you Helen? You can call me Sara, if you’d like? You seem young and modern enough for that!”

“Helen’s fine,” Helen took Sara’s hand, shaking it properly, “it’s nice to meet you, Sara. I’ve heard a lot about you.”

“All good things, I hope!” Sara smiled, letting out a quick laugh, before she placed a hand on Helen’s back and led her into the office, shutting the door behind her. “Let’s get down to business, shall we?”

Sara’s office was neater than she had been expecting, even despite the amount of time Sara had spent cleaning up in there. Her desk was fairly empty, with a mug of pens and pencils, a mug of coffee, a black bulky rotary telephone, and several papers ripped out from a notebook, as well as a heavyset IMB PC with the wide keyboard attached. It looked heavy enough to have toppled the desk over on at least one occasion. 

There were papers in folders lined up in clear plastic boxes that seemed to line the room, each with their own set of names on the front them. Last names, Helen assumed, for different cases that Sara had been working on. One whole wall was covered from head to toe with a giant bookshelf, and crammed with books of all different types and sizes, to the point where it almost looked dangerous. The wall facing that one was decked out in various framed cards that Sara had received from different people, thanking her for helping them in their time of need. Helen noticed that there was one from Devon in her loopy handwriting, signed with a heart, right in the middle.

Sara moved one of the seats for clients on one side of her desk out for Helen to sit in, and went to sit in the one across from her. She clasped her hands on her desk with white knuckles and smiled at Helen.

“Adam informed me that you were here about Devon Joralmon, so, what seems to be the problem?”

Helen’s breath caught in her throat for a moment, before she let it all out. The words came tumbling head-first out of her mouth, and her face flushed a bright red. Everything that had been worrying her for weeks, every little detail that she could remember from the last night she had seen Devon, their conversation in the Frankfurt Airport, how nervous Devon had been, and how terrible she felt about not noticing sooner, not being able to help sooner, not being able to realize that something had happened sooner, oh god what if something had happened to—

Sara put her hand on Helen’s shoulder. The tiny woman had made her way to sit on the empty chair to Helen’s left. She didn’t ask, before she pulled Helen into a tight embrace, carefully patting her back. That was all Helen needed. She promptly burst into tears. Hot, wet, gross tears overflowing, fueled by that horrible knot of guilt that had been lodged in her throat. It didn’t stop Sara though, she continued to whisper kind words and hold Helen, only releasing the woman from the tight hug to dab at her face with a series of tissues she had pulled from practically nowhere.

“It’s going to be okay, it’s going to be okay,” Sara said quietly, as Helen slowly pulled her composure back together. She took the soggy tissues from Sara’s hand and carefully tended to her face, embarrassed.

“But, what if she tried to tell me something but, I just, just, wasn’t paying attention, and something horrible’s happened to her, her, because of it,” Helen sniffled.

“There’s no way you could know that for certain,” Sara said, “so please don’t blame yourself. Or at least, try not to, please? For me?”

“Okay,” said Helen, although she didn’t feel like she meant it.

“Good,” Sara nodded, a sweet, gentle smile warming her cheeks. She got up from her seat to grab her notebook and pen from the other side of her desk. “I wrote down most of what you said down, but do you remember anything else from that night, anything else that could help with the case, if it needs to be brought to court?”

Helen paused, thinking through everything, every memory that she could of Devon until it got too painful and raw that she couldn’t anymore, “I don’t, I don’t know.”

“That’s completely fine,” Sara rubbed the other woman’s arm carefully, tenderly. “If you do remember anything, you can call me at the office, or at my home phone.”

She grabbed her business card, and flipped it over, taking her pen and writing down her home phone number for Helen’s convenience. She took one of Helen’s hands and placed the card in it, squeezing her hand softly.

“Call whenever, I’m always awake and always ready to listen, okay?”

“Okay,” Helen nodded, and a quiet smile reached her cheeks. It was a funny image, Sara spending every second of every day awake, shaking slightly with a cup of coffee in her hand.

Sara wrapped her arm around Helen, and helped the other woman to the door, opening it awkwardly with the use of one hand, and her heeled foot. She walked the woman to Adam’s desk, and stood on her tip-toes as she smiled at the expressionless man sitting at the desk below.

“Adam,” she grinned.

“Sara,” he nodded up at her.

“Could you pretty please do me a huge favor and escort Miss Pan back to her car? She’s not feeling too great, and I really have to get started on some paperwork from the last case,” she turned to Helen and gave her a sheepish look, “I’d walk you myself, but duty calls!”

“That’s okay,” Helen said, “you’ve done so much for me already. Thank you.”

Helen reached down and squeezed Sara’s hand.

“I’m going to look into Devon a little more soon, and I’ll keep you updated.”

Adam didn’t say anything to that, he simply raised his eyebrows in a questioning manner. He knew that Sara didn’t have any other work to get done, the fact that she was even attempting to be secretive was suspicious. They looked at each other, and Sara hoped he wouldn’t say anything. He didn’t, he just ended up getting up from his desk. He turned his back to both women and poured another cup — disposable this time — of hot chocolate from the automatic machine near the back of his little desk area, and put a little plastic lid on it. He walked around to the other side of the desk, and easily took Helen out of Sara’s hands, wrapping his arm around her shoulders in a careful manner, handing the woman the hot chocolate, and opening the door for her. Helen gave him a genuine, watery smile.

Adam turned to Sara as the door closed, with a look on his face that promptly said, I hope you know what you’re doing. Sara could only nod in return. Something was different about this case, she could almost feel it in her bones, which meant she had to get started right away. The information that Helen had given her alone wasn’t enough to bring whatever this case was going to be to court. Or even just to find Devon Joralmon.

“Call me if you think of anything else, Helen!” said Sara in an upbeat manner as the door shut closed. She waited for approximately three seconds before turning away from the front door of the office and sprinting back to her room. 

Sara thought of the last time Devon had been in her very office. What she had said, curled with one foot up on the seat of her chair, the other hanging, brushing against the ground. Her arms wrapped around her body in an unprofessional yet, understandable way. A way that reeked of nervous energy. Her blonde hair seemed stringier than usual, the bags under her eyes darker than usual, and the redness in the whites of her eyes brighter than usual. Devon had sensed something was happening, something was coming her way. She just didn’t know what. 

“He had just seemed so calm,” she had said, looking anywhere but at Sara’s eyes. “I didn’t know what to think, it was so eerie. And, I don’t mean like his face got all morphed into something grotesque and evil, he just seemed like he had accepted it without thought. Like he knew it was going to happen.”

“Don’t you think he might be okay with it all, that he feels the same way you do?” Sara had asked, leaning against her desk.

“I don’t know. It’s so hard to tell with TJ. I don’t know if he’s ever wanted to get a divorce but, after everything that we went through, maybe he’s just giving in after all this time. I just don’t know.”

Devon had paused, looking down for only a moment longer, as if she had thought of something new, something terribly new. She glanced up and met Sara’s eyes. It was a look that Sara would never be able to describe, never be able to replicate, never be able to truly think of clearly. A fearful look, sure, yet one of almost peace. But, something more all the same. Something dreadfully more. Something was coming her way, she just did not know what. Looming ominously in the distance, yet impossible to make out completely.

“Sara,” she said, that inexplicable look painted across her face, “if something happens to me, please don’t assume it was an accident.”

Sara could almost see Devon, sitting there, a desk away. In the silence of her office, it almost felt hard to breathe. It was obvious. Helen wasn’t the only one who blamed herself. If only Sara had taken the time to hear her friend out, to actually listen. Perhaps things would be different. Perhaps Devon wouldn’t be missing. She swallowed, and picked up her notebook, turning back the pages, until they got to the area that was stained with coffee. There was a phone number with a murky name above it.

She pulled the phone towards her, and dialed the number, pushing her finger in continuous rotary circles until she had finished. She put the phone to her ear, and listened to the buzzing ring.

She looked at the empty seat across from her.

“What happened to you,” said Sara.

“What?” responded a tired voice on the phone, sounding even more bent out of shape than she was feeling. “Who is this?”

“It’s Sara.”

“Sara?” responded the voice, slurring and crackling over the phone. “Wait. Is this goddamn Rubin calling me? What time is it? Actually no, I know what time it is, it’s called I’m not awake yet and what you’re doing is actually illegal.”

“Actually, no, it’s not illegal. You’re just weak. It’s not my fault you’re too hungover to act like a human person,” she rolled her eyes. “But, that’s not why I’m calling. I’m coming over.”

“Hungover, I’m not hu—You can’t. I’m not a functioning person yet, and I cannot have a conversation with you. It’ll be like having a conversation with a, a, brick wall, or a, a, slab of hospital jello.”

“You’re having a conversation with me right now,” Sara deadpanned.

“Whatever,” responded the voice quickly.

“It doesn’t matter what you say. You don’t have a choice in this matter, because I have a new case for you, and I need you to get on it immediately.”

“What could be so goddamn important that you had to wake me up and make my head feel like it’s going to explode into a million pieces any second.”

Sara paused for a moment. “Devon Joralmon. Do you remember her?”

The voice’s response was immediate, she could only expect the best from him. “I think so. Sweet girl. Blonde?”

“Yes. Well, something’s happened to her. Or, at least her friend thinks so, and she came by and she’s got me thinking that she might be on to something. Maybe it’s nothing but, maybe it’s everything. I don’t know. I need you to check it out.”

“You’re telling me all the details over the phone, why do you need to come over?”

“To make sure you’re not dead from all the stuff you drank last night. I can practically smell it over the phone,” she grinned into the air, “see you in twenty, Ryan.”

Ryan sounded like he was going to say something else, but Sara hung up. Even in situations filled with nervous energy and ominous, unseen chess pieces moving beyond her reach, it was nice to have the last word, even if that was just to a hungover Ryan Bergara.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for your patience! I've just gotten settled into college, so hopefully I'll be able to find more time to write! Thank you again for reading!


	3. Chapter Three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ryan and Sara are the Best Of Pals and you CANNOT change my mind. Also, on a side note: Ryan's apartment looks like my dorm during finals -- stuff stacked in horrible piles everywhere as I attempt to organize my thoughts and my life all at once! Love u Ryan!!!

_ December 3rd 1986 _

 

Sara Rubin stuck out like a sore thumb in the rumpled chaos that was Ryan Bergara’s apartment. 

She was collected, calm, with eyes that sparkled with whip-quick intelligence. She was all ordered, her frazzled curly hair pulled back out of her eyes into a polite bun; completely professional without trying too hard. She was wearing a recently ironed rosy, pastel pink suit jacket and a matching pencil skirt that fell neatly to her knees. Classy faded pink heels topped it all off, the hard plastic edges sure to leave imprints on Ryan’s rug long after she was gone. Her petite, Peter Pan type nose pointed upwards, like that of a tiny fairy, exuding an overwhelming amount of confidence. Sara Rubin was organized, elegant, and put together but, more than that, she was the exact opposite of everything in Ryan’s apartment. 

Or, more specifically, the exact opposite of Ryan Bergara himself. 

From a hypothetical third party perspective, Ryan believed at that very moment he looked much like the adult version of the _Peanuts_ character Pig-pen. He was wearing a wrinkled, moth-eaten t-shirt, a pair of pajama pants with a loose elastic but, it was more than that. There was just something about having a mind-melting hangover that made every aspect, every inch of his person feel grotesquely dirty. It was more than that of the general regret that he usually felt after a night of overly hard liquor, more than that sinking feeling. It made him want to lie on the floor, or on the lumpy couch in his living room, or curled up with his head tucked under his comforter on his bed until the greasy feeling left his body. Or he threw up. Whichever came first.

Alas, that was not an option, especially since Sara Rubin was standing in his living room, eyeing his many scattered belongings with enough amused distaste that he felt self-conscious through his haze of a hangover. Sure, her voice came bearing sunshine and humor, but the look on her face told a different story. He looked around at his surroundings. The previous night had been the final night of his last case, and that meant that his whole apartment looked as though a bomb had gone off. There were papers everywhere in unkempt little piles, crumpled notes, balled up and knotted red string. There were books standing in unbalanced piles haphazardly, sticky notes plastered against pages his scribbled handwriting on them. Clothing tossed this way and that, mud plastered jeans over the back of the couch, socks inside-out in a ball on the floor.

“Ryan,” said Sara, breaking the extended silence, finally bringing herself back to look at him, a smile threatening to break across her face, “I’m sorry to say this to you but, I hate what you’ve done to the place.”

Despite his embarrassed and hungover state, he wheezed. She was trying to break the tension caused by the grotesque state of his apartment in her awkward little way, and it was working. 

“It doesn’t always look like this,” he responded, rubbing the back of his neck, “I just finished a case, and a really hard one, I might add. It’s part of my own tradition to drunkenly rip everything down from the wall.”

Ryan gestured to the large, now pristinely empty grey wall, as Sara raised her eyebrows at him. One that was sprinkled with an intricate design of pinprick holes where pictures, notes, and whatever else had helped him solve the case had stood the previous night. He was more than aware that it made him look like a madman and a conspiracy theorist, but it was the best way he found to organize his thoughts. He loved his wall, and he wouldn’t ever trade it for any sort of advanced tech document. Not in a thousand years.

“You’ve just never been around to see it,” he added. “Nobody has.”

“That doesn’t sound healthy in the slightest but, for the moment I’m going to disregard it in favor of why I am here,” she said, looking even more serious than usual. She was all business, and she worked efficiently, even if it was in a quirky, upbeat way. It was what made her a good lawyer, in Ryan’s opinion. She always got straight to the point. “What do you remember about Devon Joralmon?”

The name was familiar, it made him think of blondes and adorableness, which meant there was a fifty percent chance she was a celebrity and a fifty percent chance that she was someone he had worked with in the past, be it as a friend or as a client. Sure, he had responded with ease on the phone but, his brain only had enough room for a certain amount of information — celebrities, friends, and clients. No more, no less.

“Blonde? Adorable? Nothing off the top of my head besides that. Would I have a file on her?” he replied somewhat sheepishly.

Sara sighed, and her deposition changed slightly. Her shoulders sagged, and she moved from her uncomfortable position, kicking off her heels and walking to his couch, collapsing into an area that wasn’t covered in junk. It was almost as though they were close friends, when in reality Ryan thought of them more as close acquaintances, or co-working neighbors, or something equally distant. “This is going to take longer than I thought. Care to make me a coffee?”

“I guess.”

He didn’t really have any desire to make her a cup of coffee. That would require moving his many limbs all the way across his apartment, near his front door, to enter his narrow hallway of a kitchen, which was filled with different devices that could beep overly loudly, or make his head feel even worse than it already did. He had taken some aspirin and a glass of water or two in anticipation of Sara’s arrival, but it had yet to kick in, or his body was just choosing to have it not work. Something like that. He hadn’t even had time to make some sort of hangover cocktail (with raw eggs or something disgusting) but, he supposed coffee would have to do.

He shuffled across his apartment, and into the kitchen. The kitchen tiles were frozen against his bare feet, and he stood awkwardly on his tip-toes in his flannel pajama pants and his worn, long sleeved shirt wishing that he was back in his bed, sleeping soundly. He meandered and stumbled about his kitchen, opening a few cupboards aimlessly, almost as though he had forgotten why he was in there in the first place. First, he got two mugs, then checking his coffee machine, realizing it was out of coffee beans, he shuffled around his kitchen, opening numerous cupboards before he located the coffee beans, putting them down beside his coffee machine, before stopping suddenly. If he turned on his coffee machine, and put the beans in, they would grind and make an unbearable sound that his brain wasn’t ready for. So, no. That wasn't the best plan of action. He decided to settle for instant coffee. Sara would have to be happy with that. He searched across his kitchen, pulling out the bag of instant coffee, and scooping some into both mugs. He grabbed his kettle, filling it up with water, and put it on the stove, waiting until he heard the water start to froth inside the kettle. He really did not want to listen to the whistle. He poured the hot — but not boiled — water into the mugs and meandered back into his living room.

“I feel like shit, Sara,” said Ryan, handing her the cup of coffee, and placing his on his messy coffee table, before slumping down on the couch beside her. “My soul feels like it’s dying but, in a painfully, agonizingly slow way. It’s basically worse than shit. I don’t want to ever move again.”

Sara patted his shoulder with her free hand and sipped her coffee. “There, there, Bergara.”

They sat in silence for a moment, Sara drinking her coffee with ease, Ryan attempting to sip his, only to realize that it was still too hot to be ingested by his body, unless he wanted to scald all his innards to unrecognizable mush. It seemed that the universe had everything against him. Sara sighed quietly to herself, finishing a good half of the cup before turning to face him.

“Devon Joralmon. Has she come back to you yet?”

The thing was, he knew he had seen a box labeled Devon Joralmon in large, scrawly letters recently. It wasn’t an easily forgettable name in a town filled with Sarah Jane’s and Brian Smith’s. It was just a matter of remembering where that box had been. He looked over at Sara, who was blinking expectantly at him, and sighed to himself. He had to get up and look for it. Sara, in all her sweetness and glory, wasn’t going to do it, and there was no reason why he would want her to. It was dank and fairly disgusting in his apartment. The less she saw of it, the better.

“Almost,” he said, getting to his feet.

It didn’t take very long to find the box, tucked under his bed like most of the older cases were. It wasn’t that dusty; a slightly dented, dark brown cardboard thing, with a few thick folders lying neatly inside. Well developed black and white photographs, a few scattered color photographs, scribbled notes, the typed transcription of his conversation with Devon Joralmon herself, and knotted red string that hadn’t come undone from pin-prick metal pins that lay in small piles in the box. He took one of the folders out of the box, and began reading. She started come back to him.

“You had sent her to me, hadn’t you,” Ryan said, not taking his eyes off the notes as he paged through the sheets of information, “she was concerned her husband was having an affair, and she didn’t know who to go to.”

“That’s right,” said Sara, nodding. “What else?”

“They were married for eleven years when I met her, three kids, very happy. Or at least Devon had thought so until she had found some numbers written down on scrap pieces of paper in the breast pocket of one of her husband’s pilot jackets,” he pulled the scrap of paper Devon had given him with the numbers written on it out of the file, “they looked like just some flight information, written entirely in numbers and spaces, but she looked closer and realized that it was a location, a day, and a time. It was enough to make her worry.

“She asked me to follow him to Germany, and to see if anything happened when her husband got there, which I did. I found out what hotel he would be staying the night at, what his suite number was, and I got an opposite room in the hotel across the way. She gave me enough money for a round trip and a night at the hotel, and it turned out she was right. I took pictures of her husband wrapped in the tight embrace of a tall, blonde woman, a flight attendant from his airline.”

Ryan got off the couch, and sat crosslegged on the floor, pulling out different papers from the case and lying them in corresponding sections on the floor, photographs of a charming, bearded man and a blonde stewardess wrapped up, passionately, in each other’s arms. He fished out of the pile a portrait photograph he had taken of Devon Joralmon in his office what seemed to be forever ago. She was by the window in his living room, blonde hair lit perfectly by the sun peeking through the curtains, looking out the window with a hopeful, yet slightly heartbroken smile. One eye lit up by the line of light crossing her face, making the intricate design of her eye seem even more complex, elegantly highlighted against the rest of her face. Her cheek faded to darkness, blending with the grainy, dark background, making her look as though she was moments away from being swallowed up by the world. He placed his fingertips on the photograph, gently caressing the glossy paper, lost in thought. He remembered her, how could he have forgotten?

Usually it was a hard moment when he had to tell people what their significant others, their spouses, what the people they loved were up to behind their backs. He made tea, a special brand with a pink-tinged flavor called ‘love’, and gave them the news gently. Then they would cry, and he would pull out a box of tissues, and everything would be out of their system in an hour and a half. It was up to them to decide what they wanted to do next. 

But, Devon had been different.

She had been sitting on his couch when he had told her that her husband was having an affair. He remembered she had sat for a long time, not speaking, a cup of that ‘love’ tea warming her hands. Her eyes were glazed over, her mind lost in thought. Ryan remembered that she hadn’t cried, she hadn’t shed a tear. It was as though something inside herself was toughening up, her heart was turning to stone. She was pulling up the courage to do something.

It was minutes until she turned to face Ryan, her eyes filled with a sense of light, a sense of something almost unrecognizable. Ryan almost wanted to think it was happiness, but even that didn’t seem right. 

“Thank you,” she said, putting down her mug and pulling him into a gentle hug, whispering the words against his neck, “thank you so much, Ryan.”

It had been a fairly simple case, no outward problems, no need to put himself into harms way. Devon’s husband, TJ, he hadn’t been expecting anything from her to be put into action. He hadn’t expected that Ryan would ever follow him, that she would hire a private investigator, let alone a lawyer to help her solve her problems. Like the vast majority of the subjects Ryan pursued, TJ was blind to the fact that his marriage was falling apart around him.

“She’s missing,” said Sara, putting her mug down on the floor, and slipping off the couch to look at the information surrounding him on the floor, “her friend, Helen Pan, came by to see me in tears, because she hasn’t seen Devon in three weeks. Nobody’s heard from her.”

Ryan felt his heart turn cold, his stomach doing an uncomfortable flip. Devon was missing.

Sara repeated all that Helen had told her earlier in the morning. 

“I can’t hire you directly, in case the feeling in my chest is right and Devon will need a lawyer,” continued Sara, turning to face him, her eyes wide and doe-like, “but, I want you to look into this. I might try and convince Helen to hire you herself, once she calms down. So please, will you look into it?”

It wasn’t a question that had to be debated. Devon Joralmon was a client, be it an ex-client, and she needed his help, even if she wasn’t there to say it to his face. He nodded to Sara, his brow furrowed slightly.

“Yeah, of course,” he said, slowly getting to his feet, and helping her get to hers, “you’re going to say this conversation never happened, right?”

“You know me too well, Ryan,” she smiled. “Since I’m not hiring you, we should meet up for drinks at some point, so you can totally not update me on the situation.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Ryan nodded.

“And, I’ll give you Helen’s number as soon as she calls me,” Sara continued, shuffling her feet into her heels, and picking up her things. She brushed down the front of her suit, ridding it of wrinkles and creases, back to her professional self and he walked with her to his apartment door. “I’ll see you soon, Bergara.”

“Right,” he nodded, opening his door for her, “goodbye, Sara.”

“Goodbye,” she said, stepping into his apartment’s hallway, glancing at the sign on his door that stated in classy, determined letters:  _Ryan Bergara, Private Investigator_.

She bit her lip, looking at him with glossy eyes, stopping herself from leaving. He raised his eyebrows at her. Without warning, she wrapped him in her arms and pulled him down to her level. He stumbled slightly, before he carefully placed his arms tightly around her. She had never hugged him before, but her hugs were warm and lighthearted enough that it felt truly natural. He squeezed her slightly.

“It’s going to be okay, Sara,” he said, although he couldn’t be sure if that was true.

She ignored his statement, only squeezing him tighter, before letting go in a sudden fashion,brushing away stray frizz that had escaped her hair-tie, sniffling slightly, dabbing hastily at her eyes with her pink sleeve. “If you find out anything, call me immediately. I want to be the first person to know.”

With that, she turned on her heel, and walked down his hallway without waiting for a response, the click of her heels echoing quietly until it was like she hadn’t been there at all.

Ryan sighed, and stepped back into his apartment, running a hand through his hair. He paused for a moment, leaning against his front door, before he wandered off to his bedroom and searched for a clean shirt, and a pair of dark jeans, pulling both on, and finally returning to his living room. It was still a mess, added to by the Devon Joralmon box and its spilled contents. He heaved a sigh, sitting back down in the middle of the numerous photographs and notes. He leaned down, and picked up Devon’s portrait, and looked at her quietly hopeful, yet mysterious face, half painted in shadow. He grabbed his now-cool-enough-to-drink coffee with his other hand, and chugged the warm liquid down. Devon’s bright eyes looked on towards a black and white future, a future only she could see. He slammed his coffee mug back down onto the coffee table and got to his feet. He had so much to do, and who knew how much time he could possibly have left. 

This wasn’t just a disloyal husband having an affair in the dark of night. This was a missing woman.

He grabbed as many photographs, notes, string, and scraps of paper he could and began putting his wall back together. Devon’s glowing face glowed angelically in the center, her name scrawled hastily under her picture. A piece of string led to TJ Marchbank, the unfaithful husband in question, all grainy and wrapped in the arms of the blonde flight attendant he had been having the affair with. Notes from the old case scattered across the wall, leaving spaces for information to be filled in here and there. He scrawled what Sara had told him about Helen on a wrinkled piece of paper, and pinned that to the wall as well.

Ryan then took a moment to step back and look at his handiwork. It was organized, in a cluttered sort of way, much like his life. Post-it notes atop film photography atop scratched hand written notes, receipts, plane tickets, the works. He nodded to himself, smiling at his wall. It was a start.

He grabbed his coat from its place on the floor, shuffled into some sneakers, shoved some gloves on his hands, wrapped a scarf around his neck (and face) and threw himself out the door. His notepad was in one pocket, with a pen, and his car keys were in the other. They were all that he needed. Steven Lim would provide the rest.

The ride to the police station was a short one in his Toyota Tercel. The streets were practically empty, there was a light dusting of snow atop the dark roads, as if the winter was remembering the storm that had been three weeks prior. Sludge built up near the edges of the roadways, tired and forgotten. It was early enough that the town hadn’t quite woken up yet, not gotten to the point of rubbing the sleep from its misty eyes. The street lamps that lined the roadways the closer Ryan got to the center of town were still glowing quietly yellow. Not quite shut off in the early morning.

Ryan tapped his gloved fingers against the steering wheel. It was cold enough to see his breath in the air, but not quite cold enough to have had the mist on his windshield freeze. A pleasant surprise in the dead of winter, middle of nowhere, USA. He turned into the police station parking lot, and parked his car, smiling quietly to himself despite the harshness of the situation (and of the cold weather).

Steven Lim ran the front desk at the station. 

It was Steven Lim that Ryan went to when he needed information about someone in town, something for his case that needed solving. Usually it was just background information, and Steven was fairly open to handing it over. Sure, it wasn’t very legal but, neither was the crime that whoever it was had committed, and it wasn’t like Ryan was involving himself in an open investigation, he was only just looking for that background information. Had the person in question ever been arrested? Charged? Gone to trial? Jail? It was all very important to know if he wanted to do his job successfully, and Steven provided the perfect place to know it. Albeit usually came with the price of a drink after work, or several, as Ryan listened to Steven drunkenly, love-sickly complain about his “beautiful” and “sarcastic” (Steven’s words, not Ryan’s) co-worker Andrew Something and what horribly wonderful thing the blonde man had done most recently.

Steven was a light, upbeat, fun sort of person that Ryan enjoyed making fun of from time to time but, in a light sort of way as to not hurt the man’s feelings too much. He had known Steven since middle school, known him since the young man had gotten shoved into Ryan’s locker, and Ryan himself had had to pull him out, and practically carry him to the nurse’s office. They had both changed since then, their lives had molded and differed from who they had been in middle school but, one thing had stayed the same: whereas Ryan enjoyed breaking the rules in the pursuit of justice, Steven followed them to a complete and utter T, not straying even when the opportunity presented itself in his very lap — minus what he did for Ryan that was. (A rather perfect example of this was from middle school after they had first met. Ryan had figured out who had put Steven in the lockers in the first place, and lured them into a back alley to beat them up, whereas Steven had waited for the administration to do something — for which they did not, and the whole event simply got swept under the rug.)

It was something that Ryan, although he did not understand for the life of him, respected nonetheless. Steven was his friend, and he wasn’t about to ruin a life-long friendship based on some silly difference that honestly did not mean anything.

That being said, that didn’t mean that Ryan didn’t have to make fun of Steven for it. He would never stop making fun of Steven for it, even when he died. His ghost would have to haunt Steven for all of eternity. Or something like that.

Ryan pushed open the front doors of the police station and shivered slightly. It was warmer inside, even with the cinderblock walls, the dull, peeling blue paint, and the sun-faded posters about teens and drug use. He shuffled on the front rug, ridding his shoes of any snow and sludge they could’ve grabbed on his short walk inside. His mind was still too foggy from his hangover to come up with any good jab off the top of his head, so he hoped that Steven wouldn’t try to attack him as soon as the man himself laid eyes on Ryan.

He began is walk across the blue carpeting to the front desk, eventually coming to a stop, leaning against the desk and—

It wasn’t Steven. It wasn’t Steven Lim at all.

A man with windswept hair, tired eyes, and rather small lips for his face sat behind the desk, staring at the computer in front of him. He clicked at his mouse, and typed a few letters on his keyboard, even though Ryan was sure the man could see him.

“You’re not Steven,” Ryan said, because there was nothing else his brain could wrap itself around to say. He was hungover, and coffee — although it woke him up — did not do anything to really combat the ache in his head.

The man took a long sip of his coffee — or was it tea? — and sighed loudly, before placing the mug back down on his desk. He looked up at Ryan, making direct, rather intense eye contact. His tired eyes radiated a sense of complete and total boredom. Ryan had the sudden thought that the man looked like the perfect combination for an advertisement on being tired and bitter for a living, only for the low price of nine ninety five.

“Funny,” he replied, leaning his head against one of his hands in a slightly passive-aggressive manner, “because you seem to have the exact intelligence of one of Steven’s friends.”

Ryan bristled. It was going to be a long day.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> School is out finally and I spent a six hour plane ride writing. Hopefully this makes up for my perlonged absence? Who knows.


	4. Chapter Four

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Dear Diary," wrote Ryan Bergara, with steam literally coming out of his ears, "today I encountered the most frustratingly terrible man, please send help. Love, Ryan."

_ December 3rd 1986 _

 

Ryan Bergara was sure he was feeling an emotion that humans were not capable of feeling. It was beyond frustration, beyond vexation, beyond aggravation. He didn’t even think it was right to call it hatred, because it was beyond that. Oh, god was it ever beyond that.

The police officer had a sense of unbearable, intelligent smugness to him. The sense of smugness that forced him to immediately catch on to exactly what it was that Ryan was trying to do, and try to destroy Ryan’s chances with all he could muster. Ryan couldn’t even really tell if the man was actually disagreeing with him because it was what he believed in, or just wanted to purely watch him suffer for the fun of it. (Although it was probably the latter.) It was like trying to get a cat to behave, or not knock items off a kitchen counter — which was something Ryan had never experienced because he didn’t own a cat but, he could only imagine. The man was a cat. A cat man. That sounded stupid but, whatever. Ryan made a mental note to never own a cat in his life.

“So,” drawled the man, twirling a pen in his hand, glancing over at Ryan with bored, half-lidded eyes. “You’re trying to get me to do something illegal.”

Ryan tapped his fingernails against the counter of the man’s desk — the sort of desk that hotels had, with a high counter and a lower desk beneath, a reception desk for the police precinct — listening to the blood pounding in his ears. This man was the furthest thing from a hotel concierge. What he was doing wasn’t illegal, what he was asking for wasn’t illegal, Ryan had made sure of it when he first got Steven into the whole scheme of things. Steven wasn’t one to do something illegal, he would stay between the lines and continue to stay there until the day he died. It was what made him a good cop. Going to Steven was just the easier, the quicker route, and Ryan was all about efficiency. 

Arrests were public record after cases closed, the police station in town released information that Ryan used in his cases to get a background before he even began to think about tailing his subject. Of course, the police station tended to release that information to the archives in the library for anyone to sift through which, in theory, was a wonderful idea, but in practice was a living nightmare. Ryan had sifted through last names and dates on a microfiche on exactly one previous occasion before he had decided to immediately cut corners, Steven being his go-to man at the police station, the one he could rely on to get public information in a quick and timely manner. Steven never gave him information on open cases, he simply gave Ryan what he could. Steven would search through to find Ryan’s desired files and hand them to Ryan without question, or summarize them if he was feeling particularly squeamish.

Sure, it wasn’t exactly what most private investigators did, but Ryan got the job done faster than those who stuck to what was right all the time.

“Again, it’s, it’s not even slightly illegal,” Ryan sighed, leaning against the desk, looking down at the man. “if you’d just get Steven, I could be out of your hair.”

“From what I understand about this, you could just take a trip to the library and get the job done there, rather than bothering poor Steven Lim, or better yet, myself. The police has better things to do than to help you finish your three-poster homework project.”

“It’s not a,” Ryan’s uttermost frustration seemed to bloom into a molten flower, “you know what, can you just get Steven?This doesn’t even concern you. I know he’s here. He’s never late to work.”

“It doesn’t concern me?” the man scoffed, leaning back in his chair to look at Ryan, “I’m an officer of the law, you should be able to resolve your issue with me. Unless?”

“Unless what?” Ryan hissed.

“Unless you’re revealing to me that Steven Lim is a corrupt cop, giving out classified information to the public?” The man gave a loud, over the top gasp, his eyes wide with fake shock.

“That doesn’t make any sense, I’m getting information that is literally available to the public! It’s just quicker to come here and get the stuff right from the source: the damn police station! I just want to know if Devon Joralmon or TJ Marchbank had any sort of complaint called in, or a phone call to the police in the past few months,” Ryan pulled one of his business cards — it was the only thing on his person that he could write on — from his wallet tucked away within his pocket, flipped it over, and scribbled down the date that he had last seen Devon, handing it over to the man behind the desk. “Since this date.”

The took the paper in his hands for a moment, his dark eyes glancing over the text, his brow furrowing for a moment, before he glanced back up at Ryan, and handed the card back to him with another one of his smug smiles. Ryan frowned, taking the card.

“If you’re that desperate to know, you should go to the library and look it up for yourself,” the man crossed his arms, and raised his eyebrows at Ryan. “And besides, if you only go to Steven for this, there’s definitely something fishy going on.”

The man had a point, although Ryan hated to admit it. From an outsider’s perspective, it was suspicious that he only went to Steven but, he didn’t really know any of the other cops well enough. Who knew if they would only all behave like this guy was behaving. If anything this guy proved Ryan’s point to a perfectly inked T.

“Look,” Ryan said, glancing down at the man’s hands, to which, lying between them there was a spare piece of police report paper covered in sharpied and penned-in cartoonish scribbles of what looked to be a hotdog man. “Do you really have anything better to do right now? Would it kill you to help me out?”

“Well, I would have to say yes, it would kill me. I’m a terribly busy man, I’m a police officer for goodness sake,” the man replied, gesturing at his drawings as to indicate how overwhelmingly busy he was, “and you are asking me to do something that is basically illegal so, I’m definitely busy.”

Ryan groaned, and leaned forward, pressing his head — which was still aching terribly from his hangover, even despite aspirin and water — against the top of the man’s desk. If it was any other day, he would’ve shown some dignity but, today was not that day. The man seemed to be making his morning even worse than it had to be, and on purpose of all things. He stayed hunched over the desk for a long moment, and the police officer said nothing, simply content to stare amusedly at Ryan’s defeated head.

The private investigator sat up, and looked at the cop — no not even cop, _desk jockey_. “You’re really not going to budge are you.”

“Nope,” the man replied with a bemused grin, popping the P loudly, “not in a million years.”

“Great,” said Ryan, although everything was not great.

He turned on his heel and started to walk away from the desk before he stopped dead in his tracks. No, he wasn’t going to let it end like this, on this terrible note. Ryan was going to have the last word if it killed him. Sure, it was childish and immature but, the man had been rude, inconsiderate, and he hadn’t even tried to find Steven Lim to help him instead, when he easily could have. It was as though the man had a personal vendetta against him, despite Ryan having done nothing wrong in the first place.

Sure, he was hungover but, man to man, you couldn’t judge someone to the point of not giving them simple information just because they were hungover. Ryan could feel the horrible, grinding, red hot taste of anger rise up from his gut, up his spine, and hang tingly over his shoulders. He turned on his heel and stomped his way back to the front desk, until he was right in front of the man. The cop didn’t even look up from his desktop computer, his eyes glazed over as he looked at something that Ryan was almost one hundred percent sure was not what he was supposed to be doing. He looked at the man’s name tag.

Madej.

“Madge. Mad-egg. Mad-gee. Oh, whatever the hell your name is,” he stated, pressing his finger against the top of the man’s desk in an infuriated manner, Madej in question glanced up from his computer and lazily leaned back in his chair as Ryan heatedly spoke, “I would like you to know that you’ve been nothing but rude and pompous since I got here, and even that is an understatement. I don’t know who you are, or what you’re even doing here but, clearly you have something large and unspoken against me, and I have no idea what that is. I don’t even think we’ve met before. Maybe you’re just a mean person. I don’t know you, and although you infuriate me, I’m not going to judge you, which is something that non-terrible people do, if you didn’t know.

“I’m also not going to go in and talk to your police chief either, that Brent Bennett or whatever. I can never remember. Complaining about you, although satisfying, is not a good use of my time. I’m a busy man, and I’m not going to let you get under my skin. You’re not worth any more of my time.

“I know you’re probably going to throw this away or something stupid and childish, especially after all that I’ve said to you but, if you see Steven, give him this and tell him to call me.”

Ryan took the slightly crumpled business card with the writing he had scribbled on earlier in their conversation, and placed it on the man’s desk. With that, he turned on his heel for the second time that morning, and headed back for the doors. He felt as though justice had been served, at least a little bit, and the smug grin that had plastered that Madej man’s face for so long had been smeared and smudged, at least for a little bit. Despite his throbbing headache, he felt better, happier, and although he had gotten nowhere, his mind felt more clear, more ready to take on Devon Joralmon’s case, even if that did mean scavenging through the somewhat disorganized archives until he found something, anything of value.

He was so lost in thought that he almost didn’t hear Madej speak from across the room. Almost.

“It’s Mah-day,” the officer said, standing up behind his desk to a rather lanky height, a more genuine smile — albeit a slightly bitter and tired one but, genuine nonetheless — on his face. “Shane Madej.”

Ryan turned and stared at the man, eyebrows raised in shock. He hadn’t reacted in a angry, overpowering way as Ryan had vaguely suspected he would. He seemed completely calm with the way Ryan had reacted. If anything, Ryan had simply wiped away the extreme sense of bitterness and resentment with his biting language, and replaced it with genuine amusement.

“It’s nice to meet you,” Shane Madej looked down at Ryan’s business card, “Ryan Bergara.”

Ryan didn’t know what to say, and the two men stared at each other for one very long, very strange moment, before Shane immediately crumpled Ryan’s business card up, and tossed it slam-dunk-basketball-style, half way across the room, perfectly into a trashcan.

Ryan gritted his teeth and exited the station. So much for the last word.

 

* * *

 

The rest of Shane Madej’s day went on without much problem. He took an extra long coffee break which morphed into an extra long smoke break outside in the cold morning, avoided small-talk with his co-workers at all costs, and watched out of the corner of his eye as one of the other men who was scheduled to be on front desk duty later in the evening consume an entire box of jelly donuts in less time than it took Shane to eat his minuscule lunch.

Now, Shane wasn’t a horrible person. He thought it was important to note that to himself, and to anybody else who was wondering. He hadn’t woken up one day and decided to himself that now, now he was starting a career in being a royal jackass, expertly trying his darnedest to mess up everyone’s day that he could. No, to the normal person coming into the police station looking for help, he was fairly, well, helpful. He buttoned up his ironed police officer’s uniform expertly, and kept a kind smile on for the regular people who came in. He filled out forms, and directed people to their desired parts of the station to speak to detectives or file reports. To the normal person, he was a sweet, albeit slightly sarcastic (but not enough to offend most people), tired-looking police officer, just doing his duty.

The difference was, Ryan Bergara wasn’t a normal person. No, Ryan was a clearly hungover, bitter-looking young man with a drive. A passion. Something that got him up out of bed and rushing over to the police station, chugging molten hot coffee, even despite the worlds worst hangover. Yes, it was that obvious. If Shane was being objective, he could even say that the man reminded him of himself when he was younger, before he had gotten transferred to Middle of Nowhere, USA. But, he was not being objective. Shane took one look at Ryan, noticed how antsy, now desperate he was to get the information he needed, and quickly, and decided to — for no other reason than to slow down Ryan’s day — mess everything up.

Shane wasn’t exactly one for rule-following, or at the very least he hadn’t been one for rule following, in fact, it was part of the reason he had been transferred to Middle of Nowhere, USA, only three weeks prior, in the first place. But that, that was a story that was still too fresh, too raw to go over quite yet. He had spent more than enough time thinking about it, and he honestly did not want to do any more.

The image of Ryan’s back folded over upon itself, defeated and frustrated, and his face, a careful shade of pink pinching his cheeks delicately, well, it had made Shane’s day. Nothing else had been quite as interesting.

It hadn’t taken very long for Shane to get up out of his desk, cross the slightly moldy seeming carpet with his long strides, and retrieve Ryan’s business card with his hasty scrawl written on the back. He flattened the paper out against his desk, and pushed out all the creases to the best of his ability.

Ryan Bergara, Private Investigator. 

Shane held the card between his index fingers for what felt like at least an hour, pinching the paper from finger to finger with careful precision, pondering their conversation from the morning. The snarl of irritation written across Ryan’s face. The stiffness in the man’s shoulders. The pristine tapping against the counter. He watched the sun on the carpet near the door move slowly, carefully across the foyer. He listened to the cars go by, one by one, grumbling through the snow. He watched his co-worker, the same one scheduled to take up the evening shift at the front desk, slowly, carefully eat the rest of his box of donuts, smearing sugary dust on his paperwork. His eyes flicked to the clock on the wall. Barely five minutes at passed.

Shane had decided. 

He was going to die in this town.

It didn’t have to do with an illness, or getting hit by a car in the middle of night. No, he was going to die of boredom. He was going to die of not doing things. He wasn’t going to die jumping over cars in quick pursuit, or getting caught in a hostage situation and shot by a sniper planning a daring escape, or even just saving a beautiful young woman’s life, letting her close his eyes with her one, shaky hand like they did in the movies. No, he wouldn’t even get an honorable discharge. People wouldn’t even notice when he died in this tiny town. And he’d die in such an obvious way: sitting upright in his front desk chair, with his eyes open, and a look of discontentment written across his face. People wouldn’t notice for days until his face started to decay.

Shane looked down at the wrinkled card in his hand. It was the most interesting thing that had happened to him in such a long time. This Devon Joralmon and TJ Marchbank’s case — whoever they were — was practically handed to him by Ryan Bergara. He had to take advantage of it, he just had to, even though he had told this Ryan Bergara that he would be doing no such thing, thank you very much. Especially because of that reason. He just had to.

The squeaky door of the police station opened, and Shane’s eyes stayed focused on his computer despite the fact that he sincerely desired to have them snap up to see who had walked in. Perhaps it was Ryan Bergara, back to squeak about something or another. To curse at him in an unprofessional manner, which would lead to a scuffle that Shane would never write up because he honestly did not care to do the paperwork for such things, no matter how much he wanted to keep his job. Now, that would be an interesting turn of events. Even if it was him, back to beg for forgiveness or something of the sort, Shane was sure that he wouldn’t help the other man. If he was going to investigate this fiasco involving a certain Devon Joralmon and a certain TJ Marchbank, he was going to do it on his terms — not on the terms of any private investigator. Honestly, didn’t Bergara know the unspoken rule between police officers and P.I.’s? The unspoken feud between the two occupations? It was a miracle the tiny man even got Steven Lim to help him. Shane paused for a moment, lost in thought. 

Well, actually it wasn’t that much of a stretch. He had to keep reminding himself that he wasn’t in the city anymore, the rules of the country, the rules of the middle of nowhere, they were different than what he was used to. There was a sense of constant friendliness that would never survive in the city. (Shane had to admit that he hated it quite a bit. He didn’t want to be waved at and greeted with a cheery, “howdy neighbor”. It was not his cup of tea.)

The sound of knuckles rapping against his desk, cut Shane from his thoughts and he looked up. 

Ah, it was the one and only Andrew Ilnyckyj; the only good aspect of the entire office. Andrew brought with himself a sense of constant exhaustion, complete with the hilarity of bad jokes, and all in all, he was a perfect match with Shane. Steven Lim was by Andrew’s side for only a moment, looking as energetic as always, as though he had had caffeine injected directly into his heart. He placed a hand on Andrew’s shoulder, with a delicate squeeze attached, before he turned and walked past Shane all sunshine and daisies, into the precinct.

Shane raised his eyebrows at Andrew, and the man responded by placing a cup of coffee down on the counter.

“For you,” said Andrew, slightly pink in the cheeks, and not just from the cold.

“I don’t know if I should thank you or not,” Shane replied, taking the cup, and taking a sip, “How was your incredibly elongated breakfast? Or should I say lunch? You two have been gone a good chunk of the day.”

“Oh shut up, Shane. It was good,” Andrew nodded, and took off his gloves, “Steven took us to a diner a couple towns over that serves this wonderful, well, I don’t know exactly what it was but, it tasted good. It just took awhile to get back to town.”

“I bet it tasted good,” Shane said, raising his eyebrows and taking a sip from his coffee.

That had become a habit of the two officers. Andrew, who generally had more time on his hands as a detective in a town where nothing happened, and Steven who was a bubbly enough person and cop that he could always find someone generous enough to cover part of his shift, would jump in Steven’s car, and they would find somewhere new to try something delectable. Shane had only begun to notice after spending a few weeks in the precinct, that the two men would always come back looking slightly more disheveled than they had left, and he had subtly started to bother them about it. Andrew had caught on immediately but, Steven had yet to figure it out.

“Anyway,” Andrew coughed brightly, to cover his flustered reaction to Shane’s comment, taking his coat off and folding it over his forearm, “anything interesting happen while I was gone?”

Shane paused, wondering if he should tell Andrew about Ryan Bergara. Andrew would certainly jump on something to do, that was for sure but, on the other hand, Shane was feeling particularly selfish. No, he was going to take this case, and play it off as though it was nothing. Just someone calling in, worried. Nothing to think twice about. He was going to solve this thing, and hope it ended up somewhere as intriguing as Bergara was making it seem it would end up. Shane gave Andrew a polite smile.

“Nope, nothing at all.”

Andrew sighed, and strode back behind Shane’s desk, back into the station. The back of his shirt was untucked, and the usually perfectly ironed material seemed folded, crumpled up. Taken off, and put back on in a hurry, it seemed. Shane grinned, and put his coffee down, picking up his pen instead, twirling it around between his fingers.

“Nice shirt, Ilnyckyj, maybe you should tuck it in next time!”

Andrew didn’t even turn around, he just gave Shane the finger.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Am I good at writing Shane Madej? Nope! Are he and Ryan accurately written in character? Nope! Can I write bickering? Absolutely not! Please stay tuned for more flaming garbage and more! <3!


	5. Chapter Five

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The mystery continues but, on a slightly different note, Shane and Andrew are bros!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A specific apology to AO3 user Farfalla_Racine -- I haven't had the time to write as of late because of school but, I'm here now! I hope you like the chapter!

_ December 3rd 1986 _

 

Grabbing Steven’s keys was even easier than Shane had been expecting.

It wasn’t that Steven Lim was a particularly bumbling person, constantly dropping this or that, and falling over himself. It was quite the opposite. He was a good cop: charming, friendly, happily willing to help anyone, and most of all, careful. Shane had watched him once in the parking lot after his shift for a few minutes, checking the engine oil of his car, propping the hood of the vehicle open, rolling his sleeves up despite the cold weather, brow all furrowed and focused as he diligently made sure it was in working condition. 

(Andrew had been watching Steven from the window, which was how the whole moment had caught his attention. He had been trying his best to look nonchalant but, there was nothing nonchalant about the intensity of his gaze towards Steven.) 

Steven was so careful, in fact, that it had taken Shane a few weeks to notice that he and Andrew were having a rather secretive affair — not that they really had anyone to hide it from besides the town itself, and the rather blatant homophobia that would surely present itself if they were open about their blossoming relationship. 

Which, to be fair, was a good enough reason for Shane.

Shane wasn’t denying that Steven Lim was smart, clever, and concise. The man in question was all of those things, and much more — even despite what he had told Ryan Bergara. Shane had a large amount of respect for the young man who constantly managed to keep himself bubbly and professional, even when Shane himself wanted to blow a gasket at the idiocy of some of the residents of the town. Steven held himself together with a thick layer of patience and kindness, which Shane was sure would have come off as Steven’s incapability as a cop to any man less competent than himself. Steven hid it beneath a genuine layer of sweetness and a general bubbly attitude but, it was nonetheless present.

Perhaps it was what made people trust him more.

But, that wasn’t the point. Nobody was perfect, least of all Steven, despite his outwards appearance. Shane had simply realized the man’s weakness, that there were certain things that got the man in question to forget where he was, certain things made him forget his incredible concentration, his order, his diligence in daily life. In short, that thing was Andrew Ilnyckyj, and that weakness was easy enough to find after one realized that the two men were in love.

Or, perhaps, not in love quite yet but, very close to it. Infatuation, perhaps, was a better word. Obsession, without the negative connotations. Willing to take a bullet for each other but, never capable of physically saying those words to each other without flustered expressions and flushed cheeks. But, for the sake of poetic notions, Shane decided he would use the term love as a blanket one. 

Ah, love, a good cop’s only kryptonite. 

It had been the reason that Steven had been so easily distracted, and Shane had been able to steal the man’s keys to the archive. Simply handing Andrew a cup of coffee, and accidentally mentioning that he added a lot more sugar and milk than Andrew liked it — something that Steven was more than well known to love — set the whole scheme into motion smoothly, and allowed Shane to simply walk by, grabbing Steven’s keys off the corner of his desk before the man in question had a moment to even think about glancing over.

Shane could practically feel the adoration pooling off of Steven as Andrew handed the taller man the cup of coffee, just the way he liked it. Their fingers brushing ever so slightly, forcing Steven’s cheeks to pinch to a slightly brighter shade of pink. Shane watched from a distance as Andrew leaned down and whispered something to Steven, who was all starry-eyed and glowing, and the two men laughed quietly — their affection towards each other was the perfect secret, Shane was simply the third wheel in said secret.

Shane smiled quietly to himself and, leaning against the door to the archive, unlocked it and swiftly stepped inside, closing it quietly behind himself. Being the third wheel, despite the discomfort that came along with it on occasion, had this time come in handy. 

It was almost a pity, all that diligence gone to waste, even if it was just for a moment. Almost. The starry-eyed look that glowed in Steven’s eyes when he looked at Andrew was enough to make Shane waver on his opinion. But, alas, it had come in handy. Shane sighed quietly to himself, as he unlocked the door into the archive room, and closed the door quietly behind himself. 

After the incident in Chicago, as he had started calling it — the wound was still too fresh to openly discuss even within his own mind — Shane had lost a lot of the aspects of being a detective that he had gotten far too used to. He had lost the very title of detective, demoted down to cop (to desk-jockey if he really wanted to feel self deprecating) and been booted out into the middle of nowhere. 

Which, of course, meant that he wasn’t allowed to go into the archive room, unless he was working on a case. And he wasn’t allowed to even go into the archive room unless he had someone accompanying him in the first place, if he even got a case to work on — something that was highly unlikely in a town where nothing happened. But, that wasn’t the point. He was here now, and it was a lot less exciting than he had hoped it would be.

It was a room no bigger than Chief Bennett’s office, filled from floor to ceiling with shelving, shelving that created thin, cramped isles of nearly unorganized paper. Shane got the feeling that it had been alphabetically organized at some point in the murky, distant past. Files lay open atop piles of overturned piles of files. Some of the papers were simply on the floor, disregarded and stepped on — he could see some shoe prints atop some of the wrinkled sheets. He was almost impressed that so much had happened in the town that there was so much paper generally in the room. Almost. The idea of finding the names Joralmon or Marchbank in the mess without being noticed that he had gone missing smothered any impressed state he ever could have had in regards to the town.

But, alas, he was here now, so he started digging in.

There were a lot of parking tickets, speeding tickets, drunk driving tickets, warnings not to do this, or that, petty crimes, missing cats, frustrated noise complaints — the boring, boring usual for such a boring, boring town. It made his eyes want to fall out of their sockets. Shane found a few copies of Andrew’s scrawled signature, and Steven’s more swirly signature signed at the bottoms of some reports. But, there was nothing on Joralmon, or Marchbank, or even Bergara — he had broadened his search radius to something, anything. No complaints, no arguments, not a single arrest. The town was painfully, terrifyingly dull, and both Joralmon and Marchbank fit in perfectly as, according to ever single archive entry, they had clearly not done a single thing legally incorrect. In their lives. Ever.

_Oh god_ , Shane thought exasperatedly, for what felt like the millionth time that day alone, _I am really going to die in this town_.

He looked up on the wall, where there was a lopsided cork board pinned haphazardly, and squinted at some of the photographs pinned onto the board. There was a photograph from a few years earlier of the whole squad, Andrew and Steven off to the right, practically joined at the hip, Chief Bennett front and center, proud as can be. It was a slightly grainy image but, it did give off that friendly neighborhood police department vibe — something that the city severely lacked. Not that that was a bad thing, in Shane’s opinion. He was very okay with the city lacking that same friendliness. They might as well have been the glorified neighborhood watch.

Speaking of the neighborhood watch, there was another photograph pinned to the cork board. A smaller one, tucked behind other articles cut out from the newspaper. It was a polaroid of a couple, and their three children — each child striking an equally ridiculous pose in paper bandit masks and cliche striped black and white shirts. The couple was dressed to be police officers, or at the very least civilians, it was hard to tell. Someone had written in hasty sharpie “Neighborhood Watch - Best Halloween Costume 1983”, and below that, “The Marchbank-Joralmon family”.

Bingo.

At that moment, the door to the archive room opened, and Shane froze, staring at the photograph. He quickly swiped it from the wall, tearing the pin from the wall and letting it clatter onto the ground. He wasn’t even sure if it was Devon Joralmon in the picture but, it was at least a starting point. His search had not been in vain.

The person’s footsteps echoed in the tiny room, and the door slammed shut. Shane pressed his back up against the shelf behind him, slowly sliding down to the floor. He was really not supposed to be here, and if anybody found him, well, let’s just say that it would not be good in the slightest. His career would be even further down the drain than it already was.

Shane found himself holding his breath as he tried to picture exactly where the person was standing in the room. He hadn’t obviously made the room any more messy than it was already but, who knew how observant the person who had wandered in was when it came to those things.

“Shane?” said the familiar voice of Andrew Ilnyckyj. “Are you in here?”

Shane let out a careful exhale. Andrew wouldn’t turn him in, he was almost sure of it. It wasn’t as though Shane was a particularly terrible person and Andrew knew this but, Andrew was also smart enough to allow the thought of Shane expressing the fact that two members of the precinct were involved in a secret relationship — one that by the rules of said precinct they were not allowed to be in — to cross his mind. The image of Bennett snappily losing his shit, as he had done on several occasions in Shane’s limited time spent in the little town, was practically ironed into the underside of Andrew’s eyelids, Shane was almost sure of it.

Shane raised his hand and waved to show where he was. Andrew wandered over, sitting down beside the other man.

“You’re very lucky, Madej, that I enjoy your presence so much,” Andrew grunted as he sat down, stretching his legs out over the different papers in front of him. “Otherwise, we’d be having a very different, much shorter conversation.”

“One in which I’d get my ass handed to me?”

“One hundred percent.”

Andrew picked up a sheet of paper on the ground and read over it.

“This was from one of my first cases as a detective, god I almost forgot about it,” he laughed quietly, reading over the text. Shane glanced over — it was about a stolen purse. “I was so proud of it when it happened, when I finally caught the guy. The bartender in town let me drink for free.”

“Stolen purse. Seems easily forgettable.”

“Shut up, Madej. You’re still not in the clear.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Shane shrugged.

“Speaking of which, may I ask why you went out of your way to distract Steven, grab his keys, and sneak in here?”

Shane sighed, and hesitated for a moment. He didn’t want to tell Andrew about Ryan, it didn’t seem right — he had already claimed this case on his own, and he wasn’t about to hand it over. It was his, and his alone. Well, his and one Ryan Bergara’s but, Bergara didn’t need to know that. (Besides, it didn’t look good that he was knowingly working alongside a private investigator. Who knew what they did to corrupt cops in this town. Well, actually, he would probably just get fired.)

“Well, some woman came in this morning, and asked me about some people named Joralmon and Marchbank — apparently she was concerned something or another had happened. It really wasn’t much of anything, and she was so scatterbrained that I really didn’t think anything of it.”

“Clearly,” Andrew said, gesturing to the pile of scattered papers around Shane and himself in the archive room. “You really didn’t show any interest in her scatterbrained comments in the slightest.”

Shane rolled his eyes.

“Well, I didn’t at first but, honestly, there are only so many hot dog men that one can possibly draw until one starts to lose their mind. So, I decided to let you guys have an adorably over sweetened moment in exchange for Steven’s keys. Which, you can have back by the way.”

He grabbed the keys off the floor, Andrew opened his hand, and Shane dropped them with a small clink. Andrew pocketed the keys with a quiet nod.

“Thank you. And next time?”

“Yeah?”

“Just ask if you want to look for someone, I’ll be your backup against Bennett if need be. He trusts me to do the right thing, and I could always say that you’re helping me do research — he knows just how disorganized and awful it is in here. I’m here for you, Madej. Just as long as you don’t go and steal Steven’s keys again.”

“I won’t,” Shane smiled kindly, “thank you, Ilnyckyj.”

Andrew smiled back. He was, in fact, Shane’s ally in this whole mess. He didn’t look at Shane with biases, with a sense of distaste. He viewed Shane as another officer, and that was all. Shane really needed to appreciate him more. Perhaps he’d invite him and Steven over for dinner an attempt to cook for them in his run-down, tiny kitchenette in his apartment. Maybe. Andrew started to get up, and gestured for Shane to do the same. Shane had been caught, and that was that. He got to his feet and sighed, looking down at all the scattered papers. Andrew patted him on the shoulder.

“A word of advice, Shane,” Andrew started, glancing over at the other man, a slightly darkened expression looming in his eyes, “don’t go looking into TJ Marchbank. You’ll only go looking for trouble, trouble that you can so easily avoid. He’s a very powerful man in this town, and he can turn people against you in a matter of seconds. Remember, you’re new here — you have the biases of your past against you. He’s a good man, Marchbank, and honestly, if you want my opinion, there’s nothing to see there. Whoever came in this morning really doesn’t know what they’re talking about.”

Shane smiled, and nodded to Andrew but, his mind was racing a mile a minute. It was by far the most suspicious, small town thing that could have ever happened. The most interesting, intriguing thing that had happened in the three weeks his mind had been turning to mush in. Marchbank, brought to him by P.I. Ryan Bergara himself. Back in Chicago, if someone was well liked by everyone that they had ever met, and people were willing to tell the cops to look the other way for this person — that person was guilty of something. They had to be. There was just no other possibility. 

If anything, Andrew had given Shane more the reason to look into Marchbank.

“You’re right,” Shane said, “they probably don’t know what they’re talking about.”


	6. Chapter Six

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ryan and Helen chill in the kitchen. Shane gets his ass handed to him. The plot doth thicken.

_ December 3rd 1986 _

 

He liked Helen from the moment he met her. She was soft spoken, all kind, gentle eyes, tender edges, and above all else, heart. It was a nice change of pace, if he was going to say so himself — something that certainly helped his hangover, rather than hurt it (as _somebody_ had done earlier in the morning).

Helen’s apartment was fairly spacious, clean, and had that feminine touch that ever apartment he had ever rented had severely lacked. There was just something about women owning apartments that made them seem much larger, much more spacious than they probably were. In comparison, he could tell his apartment was somewhat bigger but, instead gave the affect of being much smaller in comparison. Perhaps it was because he was terribly messy when it came to absolutely everything. He wasn’t sure. He didn’t want to think about it to much.

It was clear that she shared the apartment with at least one other person. There were far too many sets of expensive-looking shoes stacked in the cabinet by the door to just belong to Helen alone — besides, they varied in size. The furniture itself was clearly from two different people’s tastes, with more modern, simplistic works, and more frumpy, stitched together comfortable chairs splitting the living room, and what he could see of the kitchen in different sections. Ryan wasn’t sure which side was Helen’s, he didn’t know her well enough yet, although he had a feeling it was the more simplistic side. She didn’t strike him as a very quirky, all-over-the-place young woman. However, what really sealed the deal on the apartment being owned by more than Helen and Helen alone, was the “Appreciation Chart” that split the fridge in half, covered in stickers and notes scrawled on scraps of paper, one side for Helen, and the other for a woman named Daysha.

“Can I get you anything? Tea? Coffee?” she asked from the kitchen, where she had taken refuge as soon as she had opened the door for him. She was nervous, and he could tell.

He blinked out of his unconscious snooping to smile at her from the foyer. “Tea’s fine.” He was almost sure that he couldn’t possibly drink more coffee. He didn’t want her to get the wrong impression by jittering through their conversation.

He heard her shuffle for a moment in the kitchen, before peaking her head back out to look at him. “All we have is chamomile or earl grey, if either of those are alright? Oh, and there’s a health tea but, I’d rather not use it if you’re not sick. Are you sick?” She let out an anxious little laugh.

“Chamomile is fine,” he replied. “Thank you, thank you again for doing this.”

She smiled almost self-consciously from the kitchen. He made a step forward into the household, taking care with his shoes on the clean hard wood flooring.

“Oh, sorry,” she called out from the kitchen again, “do you think you could take off your shoes? We’re a no shoe household, if you don’t mind?”

“Of course not.”

He leaned down to take off his shoes and took in a little more of the apartment.

There were these hotel-style curtains that seemed to hang in front of every window in the apartment. These overly layered things, in different shades of blue. It was something he wouldn’t think of buying in his life. The floor was nearly spotless, he could almost see his reflection in the wooden panels. Ryan briefly pondered the idea of replacing his carpeting with wood. It would be a lot easier to clean, considering how much alcohol he seemed to accidentally spill on said carpet back home. He made a mental note of it. 

On the other side of the kitchen, there was a small hallway, which he assumed led to Helen and Daysha’s separate bedrooms, and it was nearly filled with tiny little suitcases, covered in stickers from different countries and cities alike. Right. Devon had been a stewardess, and it only made sense that her friends were too. Perhaps it was harder to make friends when all you did was travel from place to place. Perhaps that was the reason Devon had married a pilot — to stick with people who understood, rather than questioning her choices or her loyalty.

Not that that had made much of a difference. He had still had the affair.

Ryan stood up, in his — now that he looked at them — horribly mismatched socks, and walked towards the kitchen.

Helen was still in her pajamas — a light pastel blue matching set of pants and a t-shirt, the pants of which were covered in little golden stars. To the benefit of her doubt, he had called her out of the blue, after having a quick breakfast at a cafe in town and coming to the fact that he wasn’t really going to get much help from the police in this particular case, and it was horribly early in the morning. (He hadn’t waited for Sara’s help, and instead had looked her up in the phone book.) He had decided that if this Madej was as stuck up as he seemed, he’d probably find a way to convince Steven not to help out, and that essentially cut the police out of the question. So, he had decided to go to Helen, and thus she hadn’t exactly had much time to prepare before he had arrived. It didn’t look as though she had slept much in the last few weeks; she had a slouch to her shoulders, and dark bags under her eyes, darker than he assumed was normal. It was obvious she cared for her friend, for Devon. He had only known the missing woman for a short time and he was concerned, he could barely imagine what Helen was going through.

She turned to him and smiled, handing him the cup of tea. She gestured behind him at the tiny dining table that seemed to be stuffed in the edge of the kitchen, and he sat down at one of the chairs, while she jumped up on the kitchen counter and sat cross legged, facing him, tea clasped tightly in her hands.

“So, what would you like to know, Mr Bergara?” she said, with a quiet smile.

“Please, call me Ryan, we’re practically the same age,” he paused, “or at least, I think we are?”

She laughed quietly, and her exhaustion vanished for only a moment, before it returned harsh and full. Despite not knowing this woman for very long, it broke his heart.

“Could you tell me about Devon?”

She smiled sadly for a moment, before she began to speak. She painted a three dimensional picture with her words. She described every interaction, every moment she could remember where the two young women had laughed until they couldn’t breathe, had cried during a romantic comedy, had shared a knowing glance over a glass of rosé. It was as though the more she spoke, the more he could picture Devon in the room with them, sharing a cup of tea, leaning with her hands pressed against her chin, eyebrows raised. He could see the color in her eyes, the gentle point of her nose, the careful pop of her laugh, before she covered her mouth with her hand. He could see her chipped nail polish, her tongue popping out to lick her lips, the gentle flush to her cheeks that she got when she talked about her children.

He saw Devon the way Helen did, albeit just for a moment. And he wanted nothing more than to find the mysterious, missing woman.

“I remember her saying to me, ‘TJ’s up to something, I just don’t know what’, and now,” Helen’s voice trailed off, and she looked slightly deflated. “My roommate, her other friend Daysha, she doesn’t know yet. I haven’t told her about my suspicions. It’ll crush her, I just know it. Just the thought Devon said something that we should’ve picked up on, and we didn’t, and now something horrible has happened to her, I just…”

“We don’t know that something horrible happened to her,” Ryan started.

“Well, we don’t know that something horrible didn’t! I’m sorry but, I can’t exactly think positively about this, Ryan. I’m trying but, it’s so hard.” She looked down at her hands for a moment, before she continued. “She has three kids, you know, she would never leave them, not like this. She’s a great mom, she’s such a great mom.”

“I believe you, she sounds like a wonderful person, a fantastic mother.”

“She was getting a divorce from her husband, you know.”

“TJ Marchbank?”

“Yeah, him. He’s such a strange one but, he loved Devon, and I think for a long time she loved him back. That was always enough for me.”

He thought about TJ Marchbank, and the photograph he had of the man back in his apartment, wrapped up in the embrace of another woman. He certainly seemed to be a strange one, as Helen put it. He was charming when he wanted to be but, other than that, he turned into something else entirely. Ryan distinctly remembered watching the man through the lens of his camera, as the mystery stewardess went to go take a shower. He had stood by the window, smoking a cigarette with an unreadable expression, a lack of light, of anything in his eyes. It had given Ryan the chills, and he investigated cheating spouses for a living. 

“Has he contacted you, asking about Devon?”

“No, I haven’t heard from him,” she stated, and took a sip of her tea. Her face frowned for a second, as she seemed to question what Ryan was asking her. “You don’t think—“

“No, I don’t think he had anything to do with it,” he cut her off quickly. It wasn’t exactly the truth, as he couldn’t exactly rule TJ out of being responsible for Devon’s disappearance for certain. Right now, everyone was a suspect. Everyone had to be, until he (hopefully) found her alive and well, until he figured out what had really happened. “But, I don’t think it’d hurt to ask him if she’s gone on vacation or something along those lines, if you have their home number?”

“Of course but, why me?”

“Well, if you call asking about Devon, it won’t seem as suspicious, than if I called. I’ll listen in, and we can go from there.”

Helen nodded, and took another sip of her tea. She looked conflicted for a moment, clearly she wasn’t the type of person to spend most of her time lying to people on the telephone. He smiled kindly at her, and thought to himself that she wouldn’t exactly make a very good private investigator. She was far too kind, far too forgiving. Perhaps that’s why she had become a stewardess instead — she got to see the world, give off an effortless attractiveness that he would have found impossible to achieve, and she got the chance to use her kindness to help people. It suited her, or at least he thought so, from the limited time he had gotten to get to know her.

“For Devon,” she nodded to herself.

“For Devon,” he echoed.

She got off the counter and made her way to the big bulky rotary wall phone in the kitchen, one that was covered in sticky notes, phone numbers and comments of different sorts. She rotated the dial, pressing from number to number, until Ryan could hear the phone ringing faintly. He stood up and went to stand by her, and she took the phone off her ear so he could hear it as well.

They were standing so close he could see her individual eyelashes, fluttering carefully. She glanced up at him for only a moment, before she focused on the tiles on the floor in the kitchen instead, fiddling with the spring-like wire of the telephone.

The phone rang six times before someone picked up.

“Hello?” whispered a tinny man’s voice. Ryan had not gotten close enough to TJ when he had been investigating him to hear the man’s voice but, it sent a shiver down his spine. There was just something off about him. But, perhaps he was just thinking too much into it.

“Hey TJ, it’s Helen. Helen Pan, Devon’s friend?”

He paused for a moment, and Ryan could hear the man exhale softly into the phone on his end. “Helen Pan, of course, one of Devon’s stewardess friends, right?”

“That’s me,” Helen let out a soft little laugh, an attempt at something genuine.

“Well, Helen, what can I do you for?”

“Nothing much really,” she started, Ryan could see her mind thinking of something quickly, “you see Devon hasn’t been coming into work, and I don’t know if she’s told you but, PanAm has a whole process where if you don’t come in to work for over two weeks, with no excuse and no word, they have the right to fire you. Which, of course, is the last thing I want for Devon, and I assume you also want for her.

“Daysha and I have been covering for her, saying she’s sick but, I don’t know, our bosses are starting to get suspicious. I was just wondering if you knew where she was, or how I could get ahold of her?” Helen let out another sweet little laugh, and added, “or better yet, if she’s there with you and I can just talk to her and ask her what’s going on?”

There was a slight pause, and a quiet sigh before TJ responded but, there was nothing about it that made Ryan think he was stalling for time, or trying to figure something out. He just seemed surprised that Helen wasn’t aware of the full picture. It was almost odd, in comparison with everything else Ryan knew about TJ. “She didn’t tell you?”

“What happened? Is she alright?”

“Oh, she’s fine,” TJ cleared his throat, “her mother on the other hand is severely ill, and it sort of came out of nowhere. She flew to Denmark without any warning to be with her mother, until I assume her death. It’s really quite sad, I asked her if she wanted the kids and I to come with but, she was pretty adamant against it. I thought she had told PanAm, or at the very least, you and Daysha.”

“She didn’t,” Helen sighed quietly, a look of relief covering her features.

“Well, I’m sorry she didn’t, she’s been a bit of a mess as of late, as I’m sure you can imagine.”

Ryan could imagine. Helen’s shoulders slumped slightly, all the tension being released from her body. She was safe, there was no way she couldn’t be safe, was what she was thinking. He could see it on her face. Her eyes glanced up towards Ryan for a moment, all round and happy, and he could tell she had lost her focus — there would be no pressuring of TJ Marchbank on the rest of this phone call, he was sure of it.

“That’s a big relief, thank you TJ.”

“No problem, Helen. When she gets back, I’ll tell her to give you a call.”

“Thank you, again.”

And that was all. 

Ryan heard the quiet click of the receiver being hung up on the other line, and only a moment later, Helen was wrapping her arms around his neck, pulling him downwards into a giddy hug. She didn’t speak but, he could feel the joy radiating off of her in waves. From what he knew of the woman, she had been stressed out for days, weeks on end, wondering where her dear friend was, and now it seemed she believed everything was okay. He hesitated for a moment, before wrapping his arms around her, reciprocating the hug.

It was better to let her believe that, at least for now.

 

* * *

 

_ December 4th 1986 _

 

When he was angry, Chief Brent Bennett’s face twitched. It happened around his cheek area, just along his cheekbone on the right side of his face, a sort of spasm that either grew or dissipated depending on just how furious Chief Bennett was over the situation he currently found himself in.

Andrew and Steven had started ranking the man’s frustration levels shortly after meeting each other. It had come up over one evening of drunk conversation shortly into their budding friendship, something that had immediately connected them. They had been sitting in a secluded booth, all warm and fuzzy from alcohol, slurred speech, and the warm, yellow lightbulbs turning everything hazy. Andrew had, as a new detective at the time, gotten into a whole shitload of trouble after accidentally botching some report on one of his arrests, and it was then that he had noticed the twitch. Something that, after several glasses of cheap, shitty college student beer, he revealed to Steven, who gasped audibly, clasped Andrew’s hand — which had been sitting halfway towards Steven on the sticky table — and stated that he found that twitch on their Chief’s face to be the most entertaining, most intriguing thing to stare at when the Chief was angry. Not that he got angry at Steven very often but, in theory. 

And Andrew agreed, his eyes glued on Steven’s hand over his own. It was a very entertaining twitch.

It was fairly easy to create a chart of Bennett’s anger levels when it came to different events in his day to day life. There was spilled coffee, which was an easy two, as it stayed with him for the rest of the day and set him on edge. There was failure to create a report correctly, which was around a five, to a seven, depending on just how important the report was. Andrew’s botched report job spiked around a seven, just because there were so few arrests done in town, and the last thing Bennett ever wanted was someone to come by and see how terribly their town was run. The levels went so on and so forth.

The archive incident, however, had reached a new record. Shane Madej had brought the record up to an eight. 

Neither Andrew nor Steven had gone in to Bennett to snitch about Shane. Andrew had snuck back into the office from the archive room after the fact, and gently placed the keys back on Steven’s desk with a clink, quietly informing him later that evening over dinner that Shane had stolen the keys to go look up the Marchbank-Joralmon family. In their strange first steps at, well, whatever this was, it was better to be as honest and transparent as possible. Andrew really didn’t want to mess anything up between the two of them. Steven had smiled, with that warmth lingering in his eyes. But, that was besides the point.

They were both incredibly focused on their professions but, they weren’t the type of people to try and push others under the bus. It would’ve been cruel to rip the metaphorical rug out from under Shane, who was already metaphorically lying facedown on said rug as it was. So, they were surprised about how Bennett knew about Shane’s break in. Or, at least they were, until they remembered about the incident in the precinct several years back. The one that had resulted in Steven’s one and only black eye.

On a dare, one of the more rowdy teenagers in town had been peer pressured to break into the precinct, and steal something from the archive room. If he had been any smarter, he would’ve realized that he could’ve easily just gone to the library and checked something out, and none of his friends would’ve been the wiser but, this particular kid? He wasn’t the smartest tool in the shed. So, he made his plan, he would break into the police precinct in the middle of the night, and steal one of the files from the archive room as proof.

Steven had been on duty that evening for the night shift at the front desk, and he had returned from the bathroom to his surprise to find a young teenage boy attempting to pick the lock on the archive room. They had stared at each other for a good three seconds before the boy tried to make his escape, which had in turn led to a significant scuffle — in which the boy threw one of Andrew’s framed photographs on his desk at Steven, shattering it entirely — and eventually Steven’s black eye. 

(Steven had replaced Andrew’s broken frame, no questions asked, even if it really wasn’t his fault.)

Andrew had walked back into the office the next morning to find Steven, looking slightly worse for wear — dressed in a civilian shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, and a bag of frozen peas pressed against his now yellowing, purple-y eye. The boy had been locked up in one of the tiny little (mostly unused) cells that lined the back of the building. It had been one of the first times that Andrew’s eyes had been opened to exactly what Steven was capable of as a cop. He wasn’t all sunshine and daisies all the time — he could be hardcore too.

But, that wasn’t the point. The point was that because of the incident, Bennett had been so angry that he had bought cameras for the precinct, to be put in place in order to watch the most valuable places in the office. And of course, one of those places was the archive room.

Which of course, was how he spotted Shane Madej, blatantly disrespecting the rules that he had created so specifically for the man in question, and breaking into the archive room for some light reading.

Andrew had stood by Steven at the front desk and the duo had watched the whole thing go down from a safe distance. The whole office heard the very loud, very distinct yell of Bennett for Shane to come into his office immediately.

Bennett’s office was this big glass box in the back of the building. He often had the shades drawn so he could work in peace and quiet but, when it was time for a verbal pat down, as he was about to give to Shane (the man, the myth, the legend, may he rest in peace), he made sure that the blinds were drawn up so everyone could see. It made it much more humiliating.

As soon as Shane stepped foot within the glass box, Bennett slammed the door shut, letting the glass wobble uncomfortably, before he started at him. Andrew handed Steven a cup of overly sweetened coffee, and leaned his hand down on the desk.

“This is going to be good,” Andrew stated.

“You are really a terrible friend, you know that?” replied Steven, his eyes fixed on Shane’s uncharacteristically stiff back, as it was all they could see of the man. Bennett was waving his arms quite wildly, and his muffled voice was reverberating around the tiny box, allowing the officers outside to catch bits and pieces of what he was saying.

“I’m supporting him,” Andrew responded quickly, “just from a safe, and spit-free distance.”

Steven rolled his eyes, but Andrew could see the slight smile grace his cheeks. It didn’t matter how many times Steven tried to deny it, the brunette had beaten the bottle blonde in this verbal battle. He had made Steven smile.

Shane stood stiff as a board, his back looking straighter than Andrew had ever seen it, as Bennett took a seat behind his desk. Andrew could’ve sworn that ever single object currently sitting on said desk jittered slightly. There was nothing inherently terrifying about Bennett, he was a fairly spindly man, with thick almost dorky glasses. Although his bark was worse than his bite, when he got started yelling, there was no stopping him. Andrew didn’t wish Bennett’s punishment upon anyone, least of all Shane, who was going through a rough time as it was.

“You’re on that tape too, aren’t you?” Steven asked, glancing upwards at the shorter man from his seated position at his desk. There was an eyelash on his cheek.

“Yes but, I’m allowed to be in there, and I’m sure as soon as he saw Madej on the security footage, his brain spontaneously combusted, forcing him only to see red, and only to see Madej. He probably won’t think anything of it.”

“You have everything planned out to a T, don’t you.”

“Not everything, meeting you wasn’t planned,” Andrew smiled, and reached towards the taller man, and gently brushed the eyelash onto his fingertip. “You had an eyelash.”

“Thank you,” Steven smiled back, and his cheeks flushed ever so slightly, “you should make a wish.”

They stood there for a moment as though nothing else in the world mattered, Andrew leaning slightly towards his, well, _boyfriend_ (it was still weird to say, after all this time, and he hadn’t gotten used to it). The eyelash poised on his index fingertip. Steven, his hands wrapped around the mug of coffee that Andrew had brought him, a gentle, constant smile plastered to his face. Andrew wanted to lean in, despite everything, despite what people might say, or think, or do, he wanted to lean in and—

Bennett slammed his hand down on his desk so hard the whole building felt like it shook, just for a moment.

Steven cleared his throat and looked away from Andrew, who shuffled slightly and the eyelash was gone. He looked back at the Chief’s office, back to Shane.

“Look Madej,” Bennett’s muffled voice started, still fully audible through the glass, “After that stint you pulled a few weeks ago, nobody would take you. Nobody. I don’t think that ever sank through your thick scull but, absolutely nobody wanted you. You were damaged goods, and you still are damaged goods. It didn’t matter, it doesn’t matter how good you were in the past. You’re nothing now, nothing.

“But, I decided I’d take you in, I decided that well, what the hell, maybe there’s something good left in this crooked, dumpster fire of a cop, and maybe, just maybe, I can help pull it out of him. But, you haven’t changed, it’s been three weeks and you haven’t bloomed into something else, something more. I think you need to get it through your head that you’re not a detective anymore, you’re not a big city boy anymore. You were demoted, and for good reason too. You were transferred here, you live here now, and you have rules to follow, my rules, which means you’re going to be a desk sergeant, and you’re going to like it.

“You’re here to be quiet, unseen, to keep your head down and do your job. This is your last chance, Madej. I’m going to say it again because you can’t seem to understand it. Being here? In this little town? It’s your last chance. Which means, your fate quite literally rests in the palms of my hands. And let me tell you, if you keep this up, you’re not going to have anything. There will be no second second chance, no second third chance. There will be absolutely nothing. Nobody in their right mind will ever hire you again, not as a detective, or a cop, or even a desk jockey. Nobody.”

Andrew raised his eyebrows, and grabbed the mug of coffee he had made from Steven and took a big, long sip. It wasn’t like anyone would notice, they were all fairly focused on Shane’s subsequent verbal beat down. Honestly, it was really something he did not want to be hearing. It was just uncomfortable. Uncomfortable and beyond. He looked down into the mug of dark liquid and grimaced. It was way too sugary to even be considered coffee. In short, it was disgusting.

“How do you drink that everyday,” Andrew muttered, handing the mug back to Steven, who seemed transfixed, focused on Shane’s back, which was still stiff as a board. 

“How can you drink coffee at a time like this, Shane could lose his job, you know,” countered Steven.

“He won’t. Not yet, at least. He’s got to push Bennett’s buttons a little bit more to do that. We’re only at an eight, I say when we reach level ten, then Shane’s in trouble.”

“An eight.”

“Yeah. Bennett hasn’t flipped the table yet, so it’s safe to say we’re still at an eight.”

“Who’s to say he’ll reach ten?”

“Have you seen Shane?” Andrew said with a scoff, “He’s going to reach ten, it’s just a matter of time.”

The duo watched as Shane defrosted from his frozen position, staring at Bennett, and started to talk. He melted back into a sort of quiet nonchalance, placing all his weight on one leg, and talking using his hands. Andrew heard the word ‘Marchbank’, and watched as Bennett put his head in his hands, his fingers pressed against the bridge of his nose. His hand covered the erratic twitch beneath his eye, and both men watched as Bennett sighed visibly, his shoulders sinking.

Bennett waved his hand, a sign for Shane to get out of his office but, Shane persisted, pressing one of his hands to his chest, and raising his voice slightly, waving the other hand about with passion. He was determined if anything, he wasn’t going to give up without a fight. Andrew wondered briefly if that’s what had gotten him demoted — he had flown far too close to the sun.

Shane continued for a few more moments, before Bennett’s head snapped back up to look at the other man. With gritted teeth, he spoke to Shane quietly. It was almost more terrifying than his volatile frustration from earlier. And then he pointed at the door, and Shane turned on his heel and stormed out of the Chief’s office. The silence that had fallen over the entire precinct slowly came buzzing back to life. Nobody wanted to look like they had been watching the scene go down like it was some cheesy soap opera. Nobody except Andrew and Steven, who watched as Shane came striding towards them.

He grabbed his coat off the hook, and forcibly tugged it onto his body, wrapping his scarf tightly about his neck, and jamming his hands into his gloves. Steven took a sip of his coffee, and glanced at Andrew, to see if he was going to say anything. Andrew looked back, and the duo seemed to have a silent conversation, neither truly knowing what to say to their friend.

“Shane,” Steven began, finally giving in.

“Save it,” Shane hissed through clenched teeth, a horrible, forced smile plastered to his face. “I’ll be fine. I just need to take the day off, or walk around, or just something so I don’t scream and make a bigger fool of myself than I have already this afternoon. Because I want to scream, I want to scream very badly.”

And with that, he turned away from them, jacket half buttoned, and stomped out of the precinct, his hair bouncing atop his head, that one single strand falling across his forehead. Out he went, out into the parking lot, and a few moments later, both Andrew and Steven heard the squeal of car tires down the asphalt, and Shane Madej was gone. 

At least for now.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> College has officially ended for the year, which means that I have more time to write, stay up until odd hours of the evening, and stress about my future! Thank you terribly for your patience with this story, I tend to get busy but, I don't forget! 
> 
> Thank you for taking the time to read this, I'm incredibly grateful! Please feel free to let me know what you think, or at the very least just give me some good vibes so I can have the energy to write more!!! Thanks!

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading this chapter! Please feel free to let me know what you think but, please be nice to me I'm trying my best in this cruel, cruel world. Also, I'm in college now so, it's slightly more difficult to write these chapters in a timely fashion -- not that I've ever been able to do that! 
> 
> But, more importantly: thank you for reading! I appreciate it immensely! <3


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